Far from heralding the arrival of spring, Britain was experiencing a 'white Easter' today with heavy snowfall and bitterly cold conditions sweeping across much of the country.

Snow hit the South East, the Midlands and Scotland, while the North East was the worst affected area, as police warned motorists to stay off the road amid treacherous driving conditions.

Experts say that the bad weather - causing the first white Easter seen in the UK for a decade - follows the arrival from Iceland of a severe depression sucking cold, wet air southwards from the Arctic.

As snow fell through the morning in many areas, police said a number of minor accidents had taken place, while emergency services reported having difficulty getting to the scene of some incidents.

“We’re currently getting a run of minor accidents where people are slipping off the road," a Norfolk police spokesman said.

Cambridgeshire Police said accidents were being caused by drivers who could not cope with the conditions. “Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of people who can’t drive. They see a bit of slushy stuff and don’t adapt," a spokesman said.

In neighbouring Suffolk, a police spokesman added: “People seem to be caught out by the flash weather. The west of the county is quite badly affected and it is moving east.”

The Humberside, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Lincolnshire police forces warned motorists not to go out unless it was essential.

Conditions were treacherous for climbers with three men rescued from Scafell Pike, England's highest mountain, after getting into trouble.

And emergency services in the north of England reported problems for ambulance crews attempting to reach their targets amid heavy snow.

North West Ambulance Service appealed for members of the public to only use 999 in an emergency after two ambulances in Cumbria were trapped in heavy snow and had to be freed by mountain rescue teams in the early hours of today in Sedbergh near Kendal and Houghton, Carlisle.

Andrew Kirchin, a police spokesman, said people should only call 999 if they need to. “We’ve not stopped working. At 6am we put that warning out, and it was simply because that’s the time that people start to get up, we get an increase in calls, and we were just saying please only ring if it’s an emergency," he said.

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