The Conservatives have gained three council seats in wildly different parts of the country in the last two days.

Unite, one of Labour's trade union backers, will try to force a vote on reversing the government's cuts to the winter fuel allowance at the party's conference in Liverpool. The union has submitted a motion calling for "a vision where pensioners are not the first to face a new wave of cuts".

The Welsh Labour government has defended cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners. Conservative members of the Senedd called for the Welsh government to back their demands for winter fuel payments to be restored to all pensioners during a debate on Wednesday.

A pensioner who is more than £9,000 in debt says he will have to go without some essentials this winter as he loses his Winter Fuel Payment - and he's had enough of Labour already. Mark, 72, from Nottingham,

Scottish Labour has fallen well behind the SNP after cutting the Winter Fuel Payment, a poll has suggested. Analysis of the Opinium survey by polling guru John Curtice for The Times showed the SNP would remain Holyrood's largest party with 47 seats.