A BEAUTY salon owner fears she will lose her business and home if the government does not let her open soon.

Sam Parsons, who runs Defined Beauty Clinic in Evesham, has not been able to work at all during lockdown as she only offers facial treatments at her salon, and the government's last-minute decision to delay allowing those services to resume meant thousands of pounds worth of stock went to waste at the weekend.

Beauty salons were due to start offering facial treatments for the first time in months on Saturday August 1, but the plans were thwarted when Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Friday that the relaxing of rules would not go ahead for at least another two weeks over fears of a second Covid wave.

“I paid thousands out on stock to re-open on Saturday and then on Friday he just said 'no', and I cannot think of any logical explanation as to why we cannot go back to work,” said Ms Parsons. “The risk is I could lose my home. This is real.

“There’s no way now that I can earn an income and I can’t offer anything else that can keep the money ticking over. I don’t have the money to pay for a nail training course now to perhaps offer that as an alternative to keep some turnover coming through the books. I purely do the face.

“It has affected me massively. I’m all ready to go to work safely, safer than I ever have been actually. I tattoo eyelashes, eyeline, lips. I worked in full personal protective equipment (PPE) anyway before lockdown. Every treatment we offer we don’t do in front of the face anyway. We work from the side or behind. We’re not directly in front of the face unlike, for example, a beard trim."

Ms Parsons said she has been suffering with anxiety and the lack of answers over when she can start working again has made it worse.

“I started my business when I fell pregnant with my daughter because I lost my job due to pregnancy. I have paid for every nappy my daughter has ever had and she is now six.

“My business has kept me mentally stable and it is the one thing that has kept me going. Everything I have ever worked for is being taken away from me because of this decision.”

“I’ve been forced to go on maternity leave because I cannot get a job anywhere else. So in fact I’m costing the government more because they will not allow me to work and pay the money that I owe.”

Ms Parsons said she suffers with facial hair due to polycystic ovary syndrome and the lockdown rules means she cannot have that treated.

She said it was “insane” that barbers can groom beards but her treatment had been forced to stop.

“I started a course of facial laser treatment with another salon in Evesham which I now can’t complete so my course of treatments have gone to waste but I’m now also sporting a beard,” she said. “So as a woman, no beautician can take a pair of scissors to trim a hair on my face or wax it out when it is a medical condition which affects my everyday confidence but as a man you can go and get a full beard trim."

“From my clients' point of view, not just about me, from a woman’s point of view, to have to walk around with a beard when a man can go and get his groomed is insane.

“Another aspect of this is mental health for women who are working in this industry and the women who have these treatments. We are now being ordered to cover our face up when we go out.

“The only part of the face that we are allowed to expose is our eyes and our eyebrows. Why can’t we make those look pretty? Why is everybody in this industry forced to look at the work they could be doing? It’s a pure torture cycle and it’s getting deeper and deeper for people in the beauty industry and the Prime Minister is just not realising it."