With drivers across the region take to the roads in adverse – and sometimes dangerous – conditions the number of incidents, whether involving single or multiple vehicles, has gone up.

Breakdown companies and insurance providers have been on standby to deal with the aftermath.

National breakdown provider Green Flag said an estimated 21,000 call-outs were made to breakdown providers across the UK on Wednesday and predicted 97,000 breakdowns could occur during Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

King's Lynn-based insurer Adrian Flux said the majority of the weather-related calls it had received had been for low impact traffic collisions.

Gerry Bucke, general manager at Adrian Flux, said: 'Understandably, the adverse weather had an impact on our staff being able to make it to the office mainly because of the driving conditions and lack of public transport.

'Nevertheless, 95% of staff based in King's Lynn still made it into work [on Wednesday] whereas 65% arrived in Norwich, where conditions were reportedly much worse.'

Mr Bucke said the company would continue to monitor weather conditions and apply a 'common-sense approach' to the situation with regard to the operational hours of its own departments.

A spokesman for Aviva said while it was too early to judge the impact of the Beast from the East other weather events like storms and heavy rain did tend to see a spike in claims.

They added that the depleted workforces at Aviva's contact centres had been dealing with a 'high volume of calls'.