PRIME Minister Theresa May seems to be bracing Britain for a hard Brexit and so far the economy seems to be bearing up post-referendum.

However a Hampshire business leader has warned that the PM’s hopes for a clean break from Europe could cause problems for the region’s employers.

In her first TV interview of the year Mr May signalled that coming out of the single market would the price the Uk would have to pay for regaining controls of its laws and borders.

“Often people talk in terms as if somehow we are leaving the EU but we still want to kind of keep bits of membership of the EU,” said the Prime Minister.

“We are leaving. We are coming out. We are not going to be a member of the EU any longer,’’ Twenty four hours after the PM’s comments the pound slumped to its lowest level since October on Monday. Sterling fell a cent against the US dollar to 1.21 dollars and was also trading down against the Euro at 1.15.

However, many of the financial indicators since June’s referendum have defied expert predictions to show that the economy is continuing to perform well despite the impending exit for the EU.

The latest analysis from EY’s Financial Services Brexit Tracker revealed this week that despite a spike in the number of announcements in the last quarter of 2016 from financial services firms talking about the impact of Brexit on their businesses, the number talking about moving operations away from the UK remains moderate.

Of the 233 companies monitored by EY, 38 (16 per cent) have voiced their intention to bolster EU subsidiaries, move staff abroad or relocate headquarters. Of these 38 however, only half of them have begun to act on their intentions.

Stewart Dunn, chief executive of Hampshire Chamber of Commerce, says that the main worry for many of his organisation’s members is what will happen to their employees who are EU nationals.

“Their biggest concern is: ‘How are workers protected?’ “There is a shortage of skills and were currently importing a lot of people.”

He said tourism, hospitality and agriculture were employed a high proportion of EU nationals but there was also a demand for workers in the computer sciences.

“The restriction of labour will impact on our ability grow and compete on the global scale,” said Mr Dunn.

The demand for labour in the region is h is highlighted by findings from the UK’s leading independent job site, CV-Library which showed vacancies increased by 18 per cent in Southampton and Portsmouth in 2016 compared to the previous year.

This puts the two city’s fourth and fifth respectively in a national top 10 for jobs growth behind Liverpool, Edinburgh and London.