Gemma Carter needs to keep warm. Without heat, the pain caused by her arthritis, spondylosis and sciatica is so debilitating “it feels like your bones are being crushed from the inside”.
Yet in some of this year’s worst weather she has been forced to disconnect her gas heating, sometimes for up to two weeks at a time. Because there is no money to top up the meter.
“This last week has been awful,” she told the Mirror, as temperatures reached minus five in Northampton where she lives. “I thought that £15 would get me through to this week, but I went into my emergency gas credit. So, the house is very cold at the minute.”
