WINCHESTER'S bout of extreme wintry weather has cost its economy around £2m, according to a business expert.

Neil Marriott, from the University of Winchester, said this month’s snow had badly hit the leisure industry and some small businesses.

But the professor claimed it was not all doom and gloom — local shops and garages had benefited from the travel chaos.

It comes as both Winchester Cathedral’s ice rink and Intech Science Centre revealed its visitor numbers had plummeted in the first week of January.

The cathedral sold just 1,000 skating sessions in its final week, January 3–10, compared with an average of 8,000 a week in the five weeks prior.

Overall, its skating figures were down by five per cent on last year, but visitors to the Christmas market hit a record, with an estimated 400,000 attending.

Intech revealed it had its best ever Christmas, but said visitor numbers had more than halved in the first week of January, from 1,260 in 2009, to just 500 in 2010.The poor weather and problems accessing the Morn Hill site meant six schools cancelled visits to the attraction.

Winchester’s Business Improvement District (BID) said when it snowed, footfall in the city was down 32 per cent against the average figure for January.

“Local shops and corner shops did quite well out of the snow because many people were not making it to the superstores,”

said Prof Marriott, dean of the Winchester Business School.

“But the ones that were really hit hard were the ones hoping to cash in on the sales.”

But he said it could have been worse if the snow had hit a year earlier.

The recession had meant shops had budgeted more conservatively, and therefore had less stock to get rid of in January.

Prof Marriott said: “I think the real impact of the snow was on service industries that are labour intensive. When a school closes that impacts on a lot of businesses in an indirect way.”

He said it means parents have to stay at home and look after their children, while small businesses — for example hairdressers — have to cancel appointments and lose trade.

Businesses such as hotels, which had to cancel events, and leisure centres, were also affected, he added.