Local businesses have said the Level 4 lockdown for East Ayrshire is devastating as they were forced to close last Friday at 6pm.

Salons, restaurants, pubs, gyms, and non-essential retail shops will shut up shop for the second time this year, for a period that the First Minister has said will last for three weeks.

Lyndsey Lamont, business manager for Urban Hair in Auchinleck said: “It’s devastating for our business. We don’t even know if we’ll be open again when these three weeks end. You just don’t know what the impact will be, it’s so unpredictable.”

When they opened again in July, the salon did so with extreme caution, installing dividing screens between clients and using all the required PPE. Lyndsey thinks that these measures have made the salon even safer than some of the places that are allowed to remain open, such as Home Bargains stores and garden centres.

Similarly distraught was Jenny Callan who runs The Fitness Box in Cumnock, she said: “I think it’s an absolute disgrace, I’ve still not recovered from the five months we were locked down for before.”

Jenny took out a £30,000 loan to support her business as a result of the first lockdown as she found herself without income and forced to claim benefits.

“It’s unbelievable what they’re doing to local businesses. It doesn’t make sense to me, I want somebody to explain to me why gyms need to shut, there’s been no cases linked to gyms in East Ayrshire. My gym has no more than 12 people in at a time, we follow all the rules, but at this point now, this is my life, my livelihood.” Said Jenny.

Hotels can remain open albeit with very restricted limits on the type of customers they can host, The Royal Hotel, however, has decided to shut as the overheads they’d have to pay would not justify remaining open for few, if any, customers.

Aaron Kyle, sales and marketing director at the RAD Hotel Group, of which the Royal is a part, said that he hoped the imposition of Level 4 restrictions would mean that on Friday, December 11, the date when the current measures are supposed to end, East Ayrshire would be placed into Level 2 of the Scottish government’s level system.

Aaron said that as bad as Level 4 is for their business, that Level 3 wasn’t much better, with people still unable to travel to the area.

He also expressed regret that the decision had not been taken sooner, saying: “It’s frustrating because November is a really quiet time for the hotel business, whereas December’s usually really busy, and now we’re losing two weeks of December. We’ll be back with a big festive bang though, “