A SUCCESSFUL florist who has run her business for more than 20 years says she has ‘no concept’ of what she will do after Brexit.

Rosa Ashby has run Rosa Flowers in Witney since November 1997 but said she is worried about the potential impact on her shop.

She told Thursday's meeting of Oxford for Europe, an anti-Brexit group, that people in favour of leaving the EU had told her to wait for years until her business recovers.

“They say: ‘don’t worry, it’ll be alright. Give it three years.’ Three years? So how will I survive three years? I was surprised and amazed,” she said.

“Some shops will be alright: hairdressers, musicians, coffee shops, possibly. But we have no concept what we’re going to do come March.

“We deal with people’s problems too. We have funerals, weddings, we get to know our customers personally. We’re a small business,” she added.

Following the Brexit referendum in June 2016, she said prices of flowers ­– which she buys entirely from the Netherlands – had increased by a fifth.

But she said she was reluctant to pass that on to her customers because of the stiff competition from supermarkets.

She continued: “I was asked to give a quote for a wedding next April. How can I? I don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Two of my suppliers aren’t happy because they’re saying to me: ‘Well, it’s the UK’s fault.’ I said: ‘What are you going to do?’ They said: ‘Nothing really’.”

Brexit is scheduled to be finalised on March 29, 2019, two years to the day since Theresa May triggered the UK’s official departure.

Mrs Ashby told the audience at Oxford Town Hall that Brexit has other personal implications because of the considerable uncertainty over the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

She said: “I am from Northern Ireland. I have lived over here for nearly 30 years. I grew up through the Troubles.

“My father’s business was bombed twice. He had a heart attack and died as a result. We lost our home. Somebody died that night. I was a social worker and had to go into dangerous areas to get children out.

“If that border comes back, that will cause great problems. There’s been relative peace.

“I love my country and I still regard myself as Northern Irish. But what will happen? I don’t know.”

Susan Hartman, a partner and general manager of Metaphysis, a medical equipment company, said it had recently received a letter from the Department of Health.

She said: “We had a letter from (Health Secretary) Matt Hancock.

“This was a two-page letter and I can sum it up as: ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen but we’re sure it’s going to be alright’.”

But she said medical equipment companies have to adhere to strict registrations and that some would be at risk of losing those because of Brexit.

Hers, she said, had been made safe because it had spent tens of thousands of pounds in contingency plans.

Oxford for Europe supporters were urged to attend a march in London, scheduled for October 20, to call for a People’s Vote on the final terms of the Brexit deal.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, yesterday said UK ministers’ views on Brexit have been a ‘polyphonic chorus’ that must be changed to a ‘melody’.

Earlier this week at the Tory Party conference, Prime Minister Theresa May said austerity could be over – as long as she secures a ‘good’ Brexit deal for the country.