EXCLUSIVE: Millionaire YouTube star ‘Zoella’ Sugg is blasted for using taxpayers’ cash to furlough the office manager at her £5m business
- Multi-millionaire vlogger claimed thousands of tax-payers’ money for furlough
- Holly Macey earns £25,000 a year as Zoella’s ‘Girl-Friday’ organising parties, wrapping presents and walking her dog
- The office manager was seen on Zoe’s Instagram this week picking pumpkins
- News of the furlough claim was described as ‘outrageous’ by a Tory MP
- TaxPayers’ Alliance said the public would remember ‘those that helped in the national interest and those that didn’t’
Multi-millionaire YouTube star Zoella is claiming thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to pay her office manager from the government’s furlough scheme, MailOnline has learned.
The highly successful vlogger – real name Zoe Sugg – has landed several multi-million pound deals during lockdown, yet placed her £25,000-a-year ‘girl Friday’ Holly Macey on the state bail-out programme designed to help companies in trouble.
Since the pandemic tore through the economy, Sugg has signed ‘mega-deals’ to promote BMW, GHD, Etsy and Spotify.
But the revelation that Sugg, worth over £5m, has been using the furlough scheme since it was launched in April was blasted as ‘outrageous’ by Tory MP Tory MP Andrew Bridgen.
Multi-millionaire YouTube star Zoella is claiming thousands of taxpayers’ money to pay her office manager from the government’s furlough scheme, MailOnline has learned
The highly successful vlogger – real name Zoe Sugg – has landed several multi-million pound deals during lockdown, yet placed her £25,000-a-year ‘girl Friday’ Holly Macey (pictured on Zoe’s Instagram this week) on the state bail-out programme for companies in trouble
Holly is believed to be the only one of Sugg’s six-strong team to have been on furlough.
It is thought the others, including a creative manager, social media manager and advertising manager are self-employed.
The revelation that Sugg, worth over £5m, has been using the furlough scheme since it was launched in April was blasted as ‘outrageous’ by Tory MP Andrew Bridgen
An insider close to Sugg, Holly’s role within her team is to take care of tasks such as organising parties and events for Zoella and her team as well as wrapping presents and taking Zoella’s pet pug Nala out on walks.
Yesterday, Holly, 26, appeared on the 30-year-old social media mogul’s Instagram Stories feed, loading up ‘gifted pumpkins’ into a van at a farm for Halloween, suggesting she may now be back working.
Zoella’s agent Maddie Chester of Gleam Futures told MailOnline: ‘I can confirm that the A-Z office manager Holly Macey has benefited from the government furlough scheme due to the A-Z office being shut since mid March.
‘Zoe and Holly are very good friends and do a lot of activities outside of work such as pumpkin picking yesterday.’
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen condemned Zoella’s use of the furlough scheme as ‘outrageous’ and called for an investigation.
‘This was an emergency government use of taxpayers’ money to help businesses in trouble during the pandemic.
Since the pandemic hit, Sugg has signed ‘mega-deals’ to promote BMW, GHD, Etsy and Spotify. This week alone, Zoella has posted Instagram ads to her 9.2m followers for Sky TV (above), for whom she is on a lucrative deal with as well as hair care brand Function of Beauty
Sugg charges £20,000 for a sponsored post on Instagram and can fetch up to £25,000 for placing an ad on her popular YouTube videos, where she has 16m subscribers
Zoe Sugg Ltd boasts assets of more than £1m with £479,000 for her production business Pippin Productions Limited and £492,000 for ZS Beauty and finally £265,000 for ZS Lifestyle
‘It seems very odd to me that a company which operates online should have made this claim as online businesses have done very well during lockdown.
‘I would expect the department concerned to take a close look at the circumstances and if there’s been any kind of work done by this employee, the money should be paid back.’
This week alone, Zoella has posted Instagram ads to her 9.2m followers for Sky TV, for whom she is on a lucrative deal with as well as hair care brand Function of Beauty.
Sugg charges £20,000 for a sponsored post on Instagram and can fetch up to £25,000 for placing an ad on her popular YouTube videos, where she has 16m subscribers.
She also has a fiction book due out for release later this month after signing a huge advance deal with Penguin publishers.
Zoe was involved in a ghost-writing scandal over her first novel Girl Online. In 2014, it emerged that she was helped by ghost-writer Siobhan Curham, a children’s author.
Sugg was attacked online for failing to explicitly state that she did not write the book alone, though she did thank Curham in the acknowledgements for having been with her ‘every step of the way’.
Zoella’s most recent Companies House records in 2018 and 2019 show her various businesses in a financially healthy position.
Zoella’s agent Maddie Chester of Gleam Futures told MailOnline: ‘I can confirm that the A-Z office manager Holly Macey has benefited from the government furlough scheme due to the A-Z office being shut since mid March’
Zoe, who is dating fellow vlogger Alfie Deyes, lives in a four-storey mansion in Brighton and owns a fleet of cars including a top spec Range Rover and a Mini Cooper
One of the first successful British influencers, Sugg’s website Zoella.co.uk attracts 7m clicks a month and £50k worth of ads per year, while Girl Online set records for the highest-ever first-week sales for a debut author
Zoe Sugg Ltd boasts assets of more than £1m with £479,000 for her production business Pippin Productions Limited and £492,000 for ZS Beauty and finally £265,000 for ZS Lifestyle.
But significantly, the company which employs Holly, according to her LinkedIn profile, A to Z Creatives Ltd, only showed assets of £22,000 in January 2019. The companies each show a total number of employees as one.
Zoe, who is dating fellow vlogger Alfie Deyes, lives in a four-storey mansion in Brighton and owns a fleet of cars including a top spec Range Rover and a Mini Cooper.
One of the first successful British influencers, Sugg’s website Zoella.co.uk attracts 7m clicks a month and £50k worth of ads per year, while Girl Online set records for the highest-ever first-week sales for a debut author.
This and three further books are said to have earned her £2m, while she reportedly made £3m from two product ranges, Zoella Beauty and Zoella Lifestyle.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak launched the furlough – officially the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme – in March, paying up to 80 per cent of furloughed employees’ salaries, up to a limit of £2,500 a month.
It runs until the end of October, though since the end of July, businesses were rewarded with £1,000 for every employee they brought back to work.
By August 15, more than 80,000 firms had returned £215m which had been claimed under the scheme.
John O’Connell, from the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘It is understandable that some businesses furloughed staff unnecessarily given the unprecedented circumstances of the past year.
John O’Connell, from the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘Taxpayers will likely have long memories of those that helped in the national effort and those that didn’t’
In April, Sugg was rapped by the UK advertising watchdog for breaching advertising standards guidelines on an Instagram post in which she wore a floral dress by clothing brand Asos and failed to indicate to her followers that she was being paid by to push the company’s products
‘However, lockdown had a massive impact upon the economy and now every penny really does count. Some businesses have repaid the support offered to them by taxpayers. They should serve as an example for other firms that have come through the past year in rude health.
‘Taxpayers will likely have long memories of those that helped in the national effort and those that didn’t.’
In April, Victoria Beckham reversed a decision to furlough 30 staff at her fashion label, saying that her team’s welfare ‘means everything to me’ after the decision to apply for public money drew heavy criticism.
In April, Sugg was rapped by the UK advertising watchdog for breaching advertising standards guidelines on an Instagram post.
She featured a story on her Instagram account in July 2019 in which she wore a floral dress by clothing brand Asos and failed to indicate clearly to her followers that she was being paid by the company to push their products.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that Sugg did not make clear that the post, which lasted for five seconds on her Instagram story, was for marketing purpose and ordered that such an ad must not appear again in the form complained about.
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