NEARLY one in five Lancashire pensioners are living on less than £59.46 a week, according to insurance giant Prudential.

Nationally, around 14 per cent of retired people have incomes below that level, but in our county the figure is 18 per cent the highest in the UK.

Prudential said after paying council tax, water and electricity bills, a person on £5,000 a year would be left with only £3,092 a year, or £59.46 a week which means that an estimated 1.4 million pensioners have less than £8.49 a day.

The research found that 38 per cent of pensioners survived on less than £10,000 and more than half of pensioners lived on less than £15,000 a year.

The average income for a pensioner across the UK is just £13,200 a year.

Unsurprisingly, as a result of their low incomes many retired people are being forced to make cutbacks in their everyday spending, with 59 per cent saying they have had to reduce their outgoings during the past six months.

Nearly one in four pensioners said they had cut back on leisure activities, while 23 per cent were eating out less, 22 per cent had cut back on holidays and the same proportion no longer bought small treats for themselves.

More seriously 25 per cent of pensioners said they had had to reduce the amount of money they spent on clothes, while 13 per cent were having to spend less on groceries and 23 per cent were spending less on heating.

Other areas of cut backs included using the telephone and spending on medication and visits to a doctor.

Just under half of retired people said they would need an increase in their income in order to live a comfortable life, with 14 per cent saying they had decided to continue working full or part-time in order to supplement their income, and 11 per cent said they were using money they had originally intended to leave to their family.

But 5 per cent of pensioners admitted they were having to borrow money in order to make ends meet, while the same proportion had resorted to gambling and 1 per cent had even turned to crime.

Angus MacIver, director of Prudential UK, said: "It's worrying to think that such a large number of pensioners in this country live on £5,000 or less a year.

"What's more, this struggle isn't just for a couple of years.

"Retirement is now roughly 25 years long for the average person, but who wants to spend what's nearly a third of their life struggling?"