York: Christmas market traders react to Autumn Statement

Paper lantern stallholder Mark Pacan said consumers faced a "lot of uncertainty"

St Nicholas Fair has returned to York city centre for its 30th year - and the Christmas market traders did not need to fret over the heavy rainfall that welcomed the first customers on Thursday.

A graduation event at York Minster brought proud families into the centre along with tourists.

Rows of wooden huts selling mulled wine, pork pies, shimmering baubles and jewellery line York's Parliament Street.

Stallholders opened their shutters as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered his Autumn Statement, and shared their views on the government's approach to tackling the financial crisis.

It's Tom Calvert's first time running a stall at the market. He opened his luxury stationery shop Avorium, in Colliergate, a year ago.

The 27-year-old says business has been good in the past year, but the weather can take a toll.

"If the sun's out we're quite busy. If it's raining, we're quieter," he smiles, as rain hammers down on the roof of his Christmas market stall.

Tom Calvert opened a stationery shop in York a year ago

The chancellor's Autumn Statement doesn't worry him too much, he says: "As someone that tries to sell to customers, if everyone is going to have less disposable income that's going to impact us negatively a bit.

"But at the same time, with all the Covid effects, they probably do need to be raising more tax. It's understandable but it's probably not going to be great for us in the short term."

A university graduation event took place in York in the morning and a group of students in gowns and mortarboard caps stop to look at the pastel-coloured notebooks and mugs.

The cost of transporting stock from factories to warehouses has seen a big price increase, Mr Calvert says.

But it's the potential rise in business rates in April that worries him the most: "We will have to see how we would cope with that."

Mark Pacan said he was happy to be back at the St Nicholas Fair

At the stall next door, Mark Pacan is selling colourful paper star lanterns. It's his 64th birthday and he's happy to be back at the market after missing out last year when he broke his foot and couldn't work on the stall, which is owned by his friend.

"Restaurants are still full, people are still out spending money. But I think a lot of people are thinking they will worry about it after Christmas. There is a lot of uncertainty," says the artist, from Nottinghamshire.

The lanterns are handmade in India and he says the pandemic and a fall in the value of the pound have had an impact on the business.

"There's a lot [the government] could do to ease things, maybe reduce VAT on fuel, but they seem to lack imagination," he sighs.

"I think that to keep the tax threshold for the lowest paid would be really unfair, I think that would hurt a lot of people."

Amanda Mansell wants the government to do more to help vulnerable people

Further along, in St Sampson's Square, Amanda Mansell is working on a stall selling Viking drinking horns.

"They're quite unusual. There are a lot of men that want to be Thor," she laughs.

Several couples sheltering under umbrellas are looking at the rows of drinking horns, which are labelled by how much drink they can hold, from 50ml to 4 litres (1.75oz to 7 pints).

The 56-year-old from York says her boss is "smashing it" with the business but there have been shipping issues with getting products from places like Norway and Iceland, which means they have had to order stock earlier than normal.

She says she wants to see the government do more to protect vulnerable people.

Ms Mansell and her husband, a nurse in a care home, are "surviving", she says. But they have had to make changes to their lifestyle.

She says: "It really is a struggle, we're living by our wits at the moment.

"Lucky that we have a coal fire so we have that on, we don't put our central heating on, we literally have one light on. It's all that stuff - slow cooker, whatever means we can do to keep the costs down."

Annabelle Hall, pictured with Kim Ellis and Sarah Baker, said she would focus more on spending time with loved ones than spending money

Also in St Sampson's Square, selling cosmetics and dressed in a pink puffer jacket and woolly hat, is Annabelle Hall.

She says she's "really excited" to be working at the St Nicholas Fair for the first time and has been enjoying the "festive vibe".

Ms Hall, also from York, says she is not too worried about the cost of living crisis at the moment but will focus on spending time with the people that she cares about over Christmas, rather than on spending money.

She says she believes that the chancellor's decision to lower the point at which the highest earners start paying the top rate of tax is a good move: "I think taxing the highest earners, to have that trickle down into the economy, is positive. I'm glad that that's something that's happening from the Conservative Party at the moment."

The Christmas market stretches from Parliament Street into Shambles Market