By Thursday, Burnham’s focus had turned to businesses, and a 20% rate cut for pubs and small live music venues was announced.
Aidan Lavin is co-owner of the Raven and Byne pub in Southampton and said: “This is a promising start from the new Prime Minister, however, I fear it is not even close to enough.
“With increasing pressure from VAT to business rates and minimum wage increases it feels like the walls are closing in from all angles.”
Lavin said he believes that without further measures, businesses across the South will not survive.
“It is now getting to the point where we will lose some of our inns and taverns and never get them back,” he told the BBC.
On Friday, Burnham flew to Manchester to spend her first day working at Number 10 North, a new regional branch of the Prime Minister’s Office.
It is part of a move to move power out of Whitehall and into “every postcode”., external.
It was announced that Heron House, operating from Number 10 North in Manchester’s city centre, would be the government’s new position room for development.
It “brings together the levers of local economic development and devolution under one roof for the first time”, the government said.
