Businesses have reacted to the street closure that left them shut for three days last week, after a string of previous issues.

Part of Brighton's North Street, between Queen’s Road and Portland Street, closed on Tuesday morning and did not reopen until Friday afternoon due to metal panels on the roof of Boots becoming loose in the Storm Kathleen wind.

Businesses were given just ten minutes to shut to help keep staff and shoppers safe, whilst they completed work on the roof.

They had to throw away lots of fresh or pre-prepared food, and lost out on three days' income.

Snezhana Peykova, a waitress at Lavash café, said she had served two customers on Tuesday morning before the police came in and ordered them to close in ten minutes, they had already prepared much of their food for the day.

The Argus: Eunyoung Lockett, the manager of the Kokoro branch on North Street, said: “We use a lot of fresh food, like chicken and fish, and had to throw a lot of this away.”

Ms Lockett also explained that the closure meant their bins weren’t collected from Tuesday to Saturday, a big reduction on their usual everyday collection. This caused a big build-up of rubbish that wasn’t collected until the weekend.

Angel Upreta, a sales associate at Evapo, said staff were moved to their Hove branch so although the business lost money, staff did not lose out on any personal income.

However, she explained that this was an inconvenience. Ms Upreta, who is also a student, said that because the bus routes were affected by the road closure, she was forced to call an Uber to Hove which proved quite expensive.

“I am a student so I can’t really afford to Uber to work,” said Ms Upreta.

The Argus: Decathlon manager, Nathan Patrick, managed to keep his employees in work by getting them to carry out operations work.

Mr Patrick said: “Brighton is expensive and having three days off work could have a big impact on people.”

He said he was baffled at how the roof had been able to get to that point.

Lavash café chef, Daniel Gaff, said he noticed that North Street was much quieter than normal during the weekend, and he believed people might have still thought the road was shut or were scared to visit.

The manager of Smash Burger was disappointed that despite it being Boots’ fault, they were still able to trade through their entrance on Queen’s Road.

The roof has now been fixed and the road is open as normal, but businesses are worried that this may happen again due to previous issues.

Ms Lockett said: “It’s not the first time this has happened and it’s not fair on other businesses.”