More than 500 hair and beauty salon owners and employees from across the country braved the chilly weather and gathered outside the House of Commons to demand urgent tax reform for the struggling sector.

Under the banner ‘Save Our Salons’, the protestors – many of whom were wearing black cutting gowns or black uniforms, cutting hair and giving beauty treatments – urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to sort out the structural flaws in the unbalanced tax system that’s having a disproportionate impact on the industry and cut VAT on labour costs from 20% to 10% in next week’s Spring Forecast.

“What differentiates ours from other sectors calling for help is that a recently published report by The British Hair Consortium and CBI Economics highlighted how introducing a split rate for VAT makes fiscal sense for a government searching for ways to balance the books”, said Toby Dicker, co-founder of the British Hair Consortium and organiser of today’s event. “Our industry has been ignored for years and we’re urgently calling on the Government to correct decades of mismanagement.”