Soaring fuel bills are a worry for many this winter. However, not just pensioners are suffering. Fergus Hewison reports...
Maria Burnell, from Whitley Bay, is not looking forward to this winter.
She has already started switching off lights and going to bed early to save electricity.
And she is not alone.
Government help?
Linda Holden, from Gateshead, says people like her are really suffering - and the big fuel bills have not even arrived yet.
So what is the government doing to help - and is it enough?
In his famous 1942 report, reformer William Beveridge identified want, squalor, ignorance, idleness, and disease as "social evils" to be eradicated by a modern day welfare state.
Now, fuel poverty - defined as when members of household spend more than 10% of their combined income on keeping thems