A former County Durham mining community has more incapacity benefit claimants than any where else in England.

New shock statistics have revealed that one in five of the working population in the District of Easington in east Durham claim the allowance.

The Welsh former mining district of Merthyr Tydfil has topped the league in the whole of Britain but in England it is Easington at the top of the league.

Yesterday Anna Lynch, Director of Public Health and Health Development at Easington Primary Care Trust, confirmed that moves were already underway in a bid to address the situation.

In conjunction with the area's Local Strategic Partnership, Ms Lynch, said the PCT had already allocated £100,000 towards the setting up of a programme specifically aimed at getting claimants back to work.

The number of people who are paid the benefit has trebled since the 1970s which has prompted the Government to announce a crack down on those fiddling benefit cash.

Medical checks are to be toughened and a flat rate of £56 a week is to be introduced for the benefit.

It is believed that two thirds of the nation's 2.7million on incapacity benefit are fit to work but that current payments which rise to £74 a week after a year put them off finding a job.

But yetsreday, Ms Lynch said there were a whole raft of reasons why Easington had such a high number of claimants.

She pointed to its industrial heritage of heavy coal mining which has taken a long term toll on the health of its residents.

There were also, she said high levels of depravation in many of the district's communities.

A survey carried for the Institute for Public Policy Research last year also found nearly 13 per cent of the working age population in the North East claiming sickness and incapacity benefit. This dwarfed the number claiming unemployment benefit in the region - just 3.2 per cent of the working age population.