PEOPLE across the North-East and North Yorkshire rallied to help each other after New Year's blizzards caused thousands of homes to lose power.

As engineers worked to restore supplies, community spirit was in evidence in towns and villages across the region.

Pub landlord Dave Morrison at the Black Horse, in Kirkby Fleetham, near Northallerton, North Yorkshire, made sure older residents in the village and nearby Great Fencote were taken care of.

He said: "The electricity went off on New Year's Eve, and when it still wasn't on today, we decided to turn the pub into a soup kitchen."

As the pub has gas in the kitchens, he and his staff started cooking meals and distributing them to old people in the villages, many of whom only have electricity.

"The power was off for 36 hours and people needed some hot food. I think we did 22 meals," he said.

Yvonne Swanston, of Great Fencote, was thrilled with the help she received from the pub and from her neighbour, Linda Jackson, who provided porridge and hot water during the power cut.

She said: "They won't have any money for it. It's been really wonderful. I've never seen such kindness."

Elsewhere, people with coal fires used them to boil water for neighbours and others even went outside to barbeque the contents of fridges and freezers in a bid to avoid wasting food once it had defrosted.

While most people were managing to cope, some were angry that they were not advised that supplies could be off for up to 48 hours.

The automated NEDL customer helpline informs people of when they can expect their electricity supplies to be restored.

Susan Gilbey, of High Etherley, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham, was annoyed the helpline informed her that supply would be restored at 6am on New Year's Day.

It was delayed a number of times until power was eventually restored at lunchtime yesterday.

She said: "If they had told me the electricity would be off for a couple of days, I could have coped much better and made alternative arrangements. Instead, this misinformation meant I was hanging on and hanging on, expecting it to come back on."

Jennifer Simms, of Thorp Perrow, near Bedale, North Yorkshire, who was also without electricity, said she could not speak to an operator at the customer helpline.

A spokesman for NEDL said it was not possible to have enough phone lines manned to allow all customers to speak to a member of staff .

He said: "The automated message service is not perfect, but we do try to keep it updated.

"We are trying to get people back on supply as quickly as possible, but until we get engineers out on site we do not know the complexity of the faults and repairs have taken longer than anticipated."