Salisbury’s nightclub needs help from the Government to survive the winter, according to its owner, who said the city’s economy faces a “triple dip” from the impact of Novichok and two lockdowns.

Amanda Newbery said The Chapel, the city’s top nightlife destination in Milford Street, had taken on debts to keep going since being ordered to stay shut since the first lockdown in March.

The looming new lockdown on November 5, announced by Boris Johnson on Saturday (October 31), doesn’t actually change much for the night-time economy.

Amanda said: “People don’t seem to understand we’re not allowed to reopen. Our staff are always being asked when people can come back.”

The Chapel needs help to survive

Furlough will be extended, the Prime Minister said as he announced the new lockdown.

But businesses the size of The Chapel - which furloughed 38 staff - have not been eligible for any other grants or Government support since the start of the crisis, according to Amanda.

Scotland’s Government announced £50,000 grants for nightclubs on October 27 and Amanda argues something similar is urgently needed in England.

She added: “We are all waiting to see what help we’re going to get.

"We need help to get through the winter – we need something. Furlough is great but it’s for the employees.

“We just fix our own problems usually, I’m not a massive fan of state sponsorship.

“But in these circumstances we need help.

“We were hoping to do our refit, we haven’t had a proper one since the 2000s.

“But Novichok swiped our working capital. Two years later, just as were building up to finally do the refit, this happens.

“We don’t have any spare cash. If we had had any upfront help – a grant or the insurance – we’d have been able to hold on and re-emerge in a better state.

“But instead we’ve had to pay all of our suppliers off, we’ve had to fix the roof, we’ve had to refit the men’s toilets – it’s all of our money.

“The nightlife sector is basically in Tier 4 and it has been from the start.”

How nightclubs could return safely

Amanda wants to concentrate on planning for a proper, safe return of nights out, hopefully in the spring of 2021.

She hopes Salisbury can follow the examples of places like Cheltenham, which have a blueprint for bringing clubbing back in a Covid secure way.

She said: “I can see it involving a 15-20 minute test, which is part of the entry process, to keep people safe.

“I’m not going to put anybody at risk. Our demographic is not just youngsters, our staff are not just youngsters – so I wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t safe.”

Salisbury Journal:

Salisbury's future

For Amanda, a thriving nightclub and the businesses around it – the takeaways, bars and restaurants – is crucial to avoid Salisbury becoming a “dead city”.

She said: “We have got to realise  if we’re going to bring people into Salisbury to visit, it’s not enough just to get them to come shopping to keep the city going.

“You’ve got to have an offer which is a full range of things, not just two bars and a club.

“It’s got to be a bit of everything.

“As a club we need the whole ecosystem working together, and everything else needs us.

“If you lose the anchor at the end of the night, it’s like losing the theatre at the beginning – people might decide not to visit the city at all without it.

“You need to be able to attract the widest possible audience.”

Staff just want club to survive

But before The Chapel can play a part in fuelling Salisbury’s coronavirus recovery, it has to survive the winter.

Its staff are making sacrifices, with some willingly switching to zero hours terms to stay on the books, and others working in the kitchen of the family pub, run by Jonty, the Duke of York.

“They just want it to survive,” Amanda said.

“Most of these people have been with us for ten to fifteen years. We have a long term core staff.

“Many of them have second jobs, but those have been under pressure too.”

A new kind of hospitality?

Plans to temporarily change the focus of the business to bring in some money were scuppered by the Government’s 10pm curfew, Amanda explained.

And she’s now relieved she didn’t invest in experiments in “new kinds of hospitality”, as the new lockdown would have put the money at risk.

She added: “We don’t know what’s allowed. We don’t want to reopen as one thing and then be told that invalidates our insurance or our eligibility for support.

“We’ve modelled loads of different stuff but we would need to be able to reopen in quite a big way for it to be financially worth it.

“We know now we can use The Chapel’s kitchen for takeaways, so we can start doing that.”

For a generation of youngsters, a takeaway from The Chapel might be the only taste of the city’s nightlife they are going to get for some time.

Amanda said: “It’s very, very sad for these young people – this is the first generation of people turning 18 in Salisbury who have not been able to come out and celebrate.

“We teach them how to go clubbing safely and there is none of that now.”