A BUSINESS owner in Prescot says she will not receive enough support from the government during the third coornavirus lockdown.

With COVID-19 infections spiralling to their highest point yet a lockdown has been announced in an attempt to control the spread, but the last-minute announcement still came as a blow to parents, teachers and business owners.

Lisa Smith, who owns Harrington’s Bar and Eatery in Prescot, was downbeat and that despite the news of the vaccine beginning to be delivered across the country, she told the Local Democracy Reporter Service: “I don’t see any way out of it.”

She was particularly concerned about the lack of support for businesses since the first lockdown, saying she only received £1,330 from the government during the November lockdown and might receive just £4,000 for this third lockdown.

She said: “It’s an absolute joke. The first lockdown was more generous, £3,300 a month.

“I thought that’s fine, if this is going to protect everyone and make this go away, then we will pay our bills, get by and get through this.

“Then they brought in the tiering. I said do I have to open or do I have to close, and they said you have got to open unfortunately because if you don’t there’s no support there for you.

“A couple of months after that, Prescot was dead, it was a ghost town.

“All that time people’s morale and their confidence were at an all time low, you still had to open because you had no support.”

She still believes the government isn’t offering enough support, although she praised Knowsley Council’s town centre managers for keeping business owners updated about what was going on.

But Ms Smith is also frustrated by what she sees as a lack of compliance with restrictions by both the public and other businesses that have been allowed to remain open.

READ > How St Helens businesses reacted to third coronavirus lockdown

In a Facebook post, she said: “Hospitality is getting the blame for the spread and has been hit hard by the government’s actions yet hospitality has gone above and beyond.

“On the 2nd I went into Morrisons, no queuing system to monitor how many customers in store, pick your own trolly and decide if you want to wipe it down, no one prompting you to wear a mask or taking your details so you can be contacted if in contact with positive cases, people getting in your space to lean over you instead of waiting, people touching everything and putting it back, to be honest the list goes on and I felt myself getting frustrated and angry with the government.”

She told the LDRS she had also had problems with customers when she had been able to open, who had refused to wear masks or tried to avoid ordering what she thought was a substantial meal because they just wanted to drink.

She said: “You knew a lot of people didn’t want to eat but were coming in because we could supply alcohol.

“That’s not what we want so the pressure on yourself and your staff has been horrible.”

Ms Smith said she expected the lockdown to last for at least three months, but it is still not clear whether things really will begin to open again in March.

Cases continue to spiral across the country and are likely to continue rising until at least the middle of January as the lockdown will take time to have an impact.

After that, it will depend on how quickly cases fall and how quickly the vulnerable can be vaccinated – both things that are difficult to predict.

Ms Smith, like many others, will hope the end of lockdown comes quickly or that more help is made available.

Whether it will or not, however, remains to be seen.