LAST week Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave the thumbs-up to a raft of facilities reopening on July 4, including hotels, pubs, bars, cinemas and restaurants.

But indoor gyms, fitness and dance studios, swimming pools and water parks were among those listed by the Government as staying shut until medical advice suggests a further relaxation of the rules is warranted.

“We were forced to shut down straight away,” said Stacey Taylor, who runs Taylor’s Theatre Academy on Ainsworth Lane, Bolton and sister Julie Ashton. “Because we teach children we didn’t want to take any risks so we started to do everything we could online.”

Using Zoom to teach 120 students proved unsuccessful so the sisters moved on to YouTube and Facebook Live along with other social media platforms.

“We pre-recorded lessons and were able to send them out to the kids,” said Stacey. “We have tried our best to keep them interested with challenges online and competitions and we have managed to engage around 60 students regularly.”

Lime many business owners, the sisters have faced an uncertain time financially.

“We are very worried still,” said Stacey, 32.”Luckily the Co-op have been very understanding with our rent and some of the parents have continued to pay fees which has been fab.

“But of course we still don’t know when we will open because we were expecting to get the go-ahead for July 4. I cried when I heard we couldn’t.”

The sisters have done their best to putting in place social distancing measures for when the studio can welcome back its dancers.

“Our studio can fit 16 at one time with two metres between each student and we have had special markings made,” said Stacey. “We were all ready to go and geared up to start and the kids were so excited and then we were hit with this news.”

Stacey has signed up with The Great British Bounce Back campaign and the sisters are approaching reopening with confidence despite their setbacks.

“We have a good feeling that the majority of students will come back,” she added. “Most of them are desperate to come back - they are so used to being active so to just stop everything they were doing was so tough for them.