A hair salon in Salisbury has had nearly 300 bookings since the reopening date for non-essential retail and hairdressers was announced less than 24 hours ago.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that hair and beauty salons will be able to reopen from April 12 - stage two of his lockdown exit plan.

Live updates as Salisbury reacts to lockdown exit plan

Although the reopening is still seven weeks away, excitement is already in the air for business owners and customers alike.

Jayne Prigent, owner of JAS Hair Group, said: "I do feel quite uplifted that we've got a date even though it's in seven weeks time.

"It seems like it's going to be a long lockdown for us, only two weeks short of the original one in March [last year] which is shocking, I never thought it would be like that again, but to have a date is fantastic.

"We could be ready to reopen next week but I do understand the plan.

"They say they'll be looking at the data rather than dates so hopefully the data stays positive for us."

Since Mr Johnson's address in the Commons yesterday afternoon (Monday February 22), online bookings have been flooding in, testament to people's desire for more normality.

"We've had 280 people booked in since 4 o'clock, just online. I couldn't believe it," Mrs Prigent said.

"When Boris was in Parliament we must have had 80 in 10 minutes.

"We have an email confirmation system so we can check that the appointments have been booked in correctly so me and the managers were working quite a lot on the diary making sure we don't overbook with people that aren't in our priority groups."

Having previously spoken about the financial struggles of independent businesses during lockdown, Mrs Prigent is now waiting to see whether more help will be announced in the Chancellor's Budget speech next Wednesday.

She has been campaigning for the Government to cover National Insurance and pension contributions for furloughed staff, which currently fall on her and her husband’s business.

Boris Johnson's roadmap out of lockdown will happen in four stages, all of which will be five weeks apart to assess the impact of loosened restrictions on the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths before unlocking further.

You can read about the four stages and what they will include here.

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