The Chancellor announced that employers’ national insurance contributions would rise from 13.8% to 15% and the threshold at which businesses would start paying them out of workers’ earnings would be lowered from £9,100 to £5,000. £.

The lowering of the threshold will affect Neil Woodbridge’s social enterprise Thurrock Lifestyle Solutions, which employs 200 people to support local disabled people.

“As a business I’m very anxious. We spend £36,000 a month on national insurance. I think that’s going to go up by three or four thousand,” he said.

Mr Woodbridge was concerned about having to pay NI for his part-time staff.

“We’re going to bear a lot of this tax burden and it’s going to be hard on us.”

Gina Bonsu is set to hire more staff as she opens a restaurant next to her Afro-Caribbean supermarket Mama G.

“If there had been bigger increases to national insurance, it would have impacted the number of staff I hired,” she pointed out.

Although she will have to pay the higher National Living Wage for staff, Ms Bonsu said it was a “good thing” for her children and the young people she works with.

Ann Scott, of the Essex Small Business Federation, concluded: “Speaking to many of the businesses in the room today, I think they were bracing for a very, very difficult time.

“Some measures will protect businesses from pain.”