A town’s garden centre is hoping that early preparation will set it in good stead for the second lockdown.

North Walsham Garden Centre has already prepared itself to restart its delivery service and has ordered in extra gardening stock to cope with a potential boom in sales as it saw during the last national shutdown.

Prime minister Boris Johnson has announced England will enter a national lockdown to combat a rise in cases.

Owner Ben Youngs said: “We’re all set up like we were last time in case it does happen so we can offer our delivery service, we know what we’re doing this time and we’ve got everything in place.

“We hope we will be allowed to trade through, we’ve got more garden stock in than ever ready for it, we’ve anticipated this would happen and that there’s now a lot more gardeners out there so we’ve got more compost and seeds in ready to cope.

“What it will effect is that we’ve obviously got all our Christmas displays out so it will be a shame if people can’t see them, hopefully if it ends on December 1 like they’re saying there will be a bit of a Christmas boom and we’re all ready for that, with displays and stock.

“It will be a tricky time again for us but hopefully in December it will pay off in the end.”

The business saw record trade upon reopening fully in May after a very popular lockdown delivery service had kept trade ticking over during the months the store was closed.

Mr Youngs said two weeks after initially reopening: “Closure came during our peak time for custom so it wasn’t great, we’ve had our delivery service, which was very popular, which kept us going through lockdown, but obviously it wasn’t as good as it could’ve been during the season, but it’s definitely worked well.”