Mum goes to bed with her kids at 6pm to keep warm as she can't afford to heat freezing house

A mum who cannot afford to turn on the heating says she and her children are being forced to go to bed at 6pm in a bid to keep warm.

Chantelle Stroud, 33, - who has two under-fives and a teenager - has run out of electricity and currently has just 8 on her gas meter thanks to a cold-weather payment.

She says her "big, old" private rented house is "impossible to keep warm" whilst rationing gas use.

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It means as well as going to bed as soon as it gets dark, Chantelle has also resorted to taking her children to her mums to cook, reports the Mirror.

“We have been ill for weeks and weeks, my eldest since before Christmas, the doctor says she has a problem with her lung. Her bedroom is freezing," she said.

Chantelle, from Minster-on-Sea, on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, is one of the people living below the breadline being helped by the Sheppey Support Bus.

It was launched in November to offer food support - a social supermarket on the lower deck - and fuel poverty support - offices on the upper deck - to the people of this deprived area.

The bus follows a route visiting those in need of help.

Energy prices are set to rise by more than 50 percent in April plunging millions more people like Chantelle into fuel poverty.

Deborah Clay, 48, from Sheerness-on-Sea, the bus’s next stop, has been without gas since Christmas Eve.

A former baker and confectioner battling bad health and living alone, she racked up energy debts so agreed to switch to a prepayment meter, paying off that debt incrementally from each top-up.

But on Christmas Eve when she put on £10 for gas, there was a fault and it didn’t register. She had no more to