Hampton Hill traders struggling to stay afloat in the recession are being hit by a 500-year-old tax designed to compensate Henry VIII for deer which leap to freedom over Bushy Park's walls.

The deer tax, established in the early 1500s after the park was enclosed for hunting, is now being challenged by Twickenham MP Vince Cable, who describes the archaic levy as “outrageous”.

He said businesses were struggling to pay the “deer tax” - a fee of £1,400 a year.

Lawrence Phipps, who has owned the high street photographic firm Click-2-Print for the past five years, said: “I'm now getting threatening letters, and all the shops along here which back on to the wall of Bushy Park are anticipating a further rise.”

The trader insisted that he had no objection to paying a fair tax to help maintain English heritage, as the back wall of his premises is the perimeter wall of Bushy Park.

However, he resents any further hikes in tax, especially as rules prevent so much as the hanging of a Christmas wreath from the park wall.

Hampton Hill town centre manager Jayne Jackson said the tax was grossly unfair on businesses battling to survive difficult trading conditions, and added that many businesses didn't realise they were having to pay the ancient levy because it was concealed in their rent.

She added: “They'd have to be bionic deer to jump the wall.”

Mr Cable has condemned the Tudor tax, and has written to the Royal Parks chief executive arguing that running a business is hard enough these days without still having to pay compensation to King Henry VIII.

“It seems outrageous that an ancient tax introduced in quite different circumstances to today should continue to be levied, and with massive increases which threaten the viability of businesses.”

Councillor Jonathan Cardy, who represents Fulwell and Hampton Hill, has spoken to Royal Parks about the tax, and been told it is a levy on the “freebord”, the five-metre strip of land from the Bushy Park wall which is owned by the crown.

He has pledged to raise with the park authorities the cases of any individual shop owners who are being unfairly penalised.

Royal Parks says the “encroachment rate”, as it dubs the levy, is “the licence fee charged for use of park land”. A spokesman added: “Many properties in Hampton Hill High Street have encroachment licences because they have part of their property on the freebord, or external buildings. The original valuations took place in the mid 90s, and increases in licence fees since then have often been by indexation.”

There are 320 red and fallow deer in Bushy Park. Henry VIII had the parkland walled in to improve his chances of catching the animals, and deer were still hunted into the 18th century.

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