Floods which devastated parts of Britain in the wake of storm Desmond a year ago were the worst since records began more than 100 years ago, a new scientific review has found.

The chaos amounted to the largest sustained period of winter flooding on record and ranked alongside spring 1947 as the worst floods overall for at least a century.

But the damage and disruption, including 16,000 properties flooded, would almost certainly have been far worse had it not been for modern weather forecasting and modelling techniques, the review by experts at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and British Hydrological Society concludes.