IT’S an unusually sunny day for October and in rural Boston the funfair has come to town for Halloween half-term. Smiling kids armed with candy floss as big as their heads are making their way through the pedestrianised centre, their parents trailing behind. It should be boom time for shops in the Lincolnshire town but instead they are facing a pre-budget horror show.
Nearly one in three shops lie empty while 10 per cent of restaurants have shut in Boston since the pandemic . Local businesses say they are struggling with rising energy costs, huge rents and a downturn in sales as the cost-of-living crisis continues to batter shoppers. Now they fear a pre-Halloween nightmare if Chancellor Rachel Reeves goes ahead with a looming tax hike in Wednesday’s budget .
READ MORE FEATURES Retailers currently get a 75 per cent discount on their business rates but it’s due to end on April 1 next year - sending bills soaring. Cafe owner Anna Britt, 56, told us: “If the Government makes me pay full rates then I may have to close. “The costs are rising all the time and it’s already difficult.
“This place is my absolute passion. It was my dream to run a cafe and I took a chance by opening up a few days before the second lockdown was announced. Most read in The Sun “If we have to shut I will cry my eyes out.
” 'Criminal activity' Boston is already full of boarded up and shuttered stores plastered with ‘for let’ signs, their fittings torn from walls. In May, nine shops acros.