The cost of living crisis continues to badly affect Greater Manchester and the rest of the country, with food inflation in particular causing misery.
With mortgages and rent also rising dramatically, pressure on household budgets remains extremely high. Part of government efforts to tackle that has been the introduction of cost of living payments.
The direct payments from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are designed to east some of the pressures and cut some of the gap caused by high inflation levels over the past year. As yet, Rishi Sunak has been able to get nowhere near his pledge of halving the rate of inflation, and millions of households will welcome the support.
