Last week's cold snowy snap triggered a Cold Weather Payment for eligible households in most parts of the North East. Only a handful of areas, mostly along the region's coasts, will miss out.
Those on certain benefits receive £25 each time the temperature is recorded as 0 degrees or below for seven consecutive days. And while last year saw no Cold Weather Payments go to families in our region, this year has seen three payments so far to most postcode areas.
There are an estimated four million eligible recipients for the Cold Winter Payments in the UK but last winter, only six seven-day cold snaps triggered the payments in the whole of the November-March period, and all of them were in Scotland from late December to early January.
