Brexit: UK fashion industry warns it faces threat to survival

Brexit: UK fashion industry warns it faces threat to survival

image copyrightPA

image captionTwiggy helped put the UK industry on the global map.

More than 400 figures from the UK fashion industry have signed an open letter to the prime minister warning that post-Brexit red tape and travel restrictions threaten their survival.

Signatories, including Twiggy and Katharine Hamnett, say some firms are already relocating to the EU.

They say the sector is worth £35bn to the UK and employs one million people.

"Yet we have been disregarded in this deal and our concerns overlooked," the letter to Boris Johnson says.

The letter, to be presented on Tuesday morning, calls for a meeting with ministers because "without urgent attention these issues will jeopardise the immediate and long term future of the sector".

They said the trade agreement, finalised on Christmas Eve just a week before the UK left the bloc's single market and customs union, had failed to deliver on promises of frictionless future trade.

The sector's concerns echo those of other sectors, from music to fisheries, who argue the new bureaucratic regime is endangering the future of their industries.

image captionEvents like London Fashion Week is one of the global industry's most important events.

But the letter says the fashion industry contributes "more to UK GDP than fishing,