JOB losses may be on the cards as last week's Budget delivered mixed blessings for St Albans businesses.

Reactions to Chancellor Gordon Brown's seventh Budget have been varied, but one consensus is that businesses may have to resort to job cuts to pay for extra taxes.

Business Link Hertfordshire, which represents local small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), welcomed parts of the budget.

Director of business services John Collier said freezing corporation tax and capital gains tax and increasing the VAT threshold was good news for Hertfordshire's small businesses. But he said this contrasted starkly with disappointments from both this and last year's Budgets.

He said: "The increases in national insurance costs have come as a disappointment to many SMEs, often leaving them feeling that reducing staff levels is the only solution to cutting increasing salary bills."

Mr Collier urged businesses to look at alternative solutions such as streamlining supply chain processes or investing in training staff in reducing costs. He said: "Any business should remember that its workforce is its greatest asset."

Nevertheless, a Chamber of Commerce national survey has revealed that 20 per cent of businesses are considering dealing with the rise in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) by cutting jobs and a further 15 per cent by imposing wage cuts. Another 11 per cent have considered moving abroad.

Director general David Frost said: "The rise in NICs this week took away much more than the Chancellor has given, particularly when combined with the £21 billion of extra regulation piled on business since 1997.

"The Chancellor boasts of the rise in employment levels in recent years. However, if this is disproportionately in the public sector it is not good for the UK economy."

Other concerns for local businesses included increases in stamp duty on leasehold commercial property.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) called this "the fly in the ointment" of an otherwise welcome budget, "which could be devastating for some high street businesses".

And even the hike in beer duty has been criticised for hitting jobs.

Mr Mike Benner, of the St Albans-based Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), said: "High beer duty is the cause of smuggling. It therefore affects pubs and consequently local jobs."