A DISPUTE over noise has forced a home salon owner from Petersfield to make a savage cut to her business.

Lynda Coates and her close-knit team have seen off the pandemic and difficult trading conditions in the town centre over the last three decades.

She converted a garage in the garden of her Buckingham Road home into a salon for £14,000 around the turn of the decade in the understanding that planners were fine with the move.

But that move turned sour after complaints from neighbours over parking and noise, so this Christmas will be the last that Lynda and her colleagues will spend together as a team.

She might live next to a Travis Perkins and within earshot of a railway, Aldi and industrial estate, but planners say her business is too noisy for a residential area.

She will say goodbye to her “amazing girls” in February while the “stress and worry” that months of fighting having caused has also left her pondering her place in town.

“I’ve fought and fought but no-one has given us a chance,” said Lynda, who ran a salon in Chapel Street before converting the garage in her garden.

“This place was ideal for all of us but I don’t want the stress and worry of it anymore so we’ve got until February 9th and that’s it. After 24 years of working together, that’s it.”

She added: “The customers are devastated, they really are. They just think it’s so unfair.

“No-one is employed here, all the girls work for themselves and claim their own wage. What harm are we doing?”

As reported in September, Lynda claimed that planners were happy with the garden development but changed their attitude when a neighbour complained.

A planning application and appeal were both lost while later talks between herself and the district council to come to an arrangement left her with an ultimatum to downsize.