The children had just left for the day when Joanna Hall, the headteacher at North Wheatley primary in Bassetlaw, realised it was going to happen again. For the third time in 12 years, the Nottinghamshire school was about to be flooded.

She had minutes to rush out an email to parents, knowing that the internet server – fixed to the floor – would soon be submerged. She had barely pressed “send” before water began to rise up through the carpets and beyond the skirting boards. Within half an hour, the main building was 45cm under and a cavalry of parents had arrived to help with the salvage operation.

She didn’t make it home that night, managing a few fitful hours’ sleep on a crash mat in the school hall, which had been rebuilt up several steps after the first big flood in 2007 and another inundation in 2008. Back then the damage was so great that children spent two years in portable cabins while the school was rebuilt from scratch. This time around, thanks to a flood-resilient redesign, the school was closed for just three days.

On Friday, when the Observer visited, the pupils were back, having a mufti day to raise money for Children In Need, lessons soundtracked by the hum of dehumidifiers. One 10-year-old reflected on why her school kept getting submerged. “I know Brexit is quite important,” she said, “but I really think the government needs to do more about climate change.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kathy Frankland at Riverside Caravan Park: ‘It feels like we have been forgotten a bit.’ Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

The floods across much of northern and central England were headline news all week, with politicians queueing up to be photographed with a mop or a sandbag – and, in Boris Johnson’s case, to get a tongue-lashing. Fishlake, a village near Doncaster, drew most of the coverage, thanks to its name and the fact that the water was taking so long to drain away that TV reporters could do dramatic pieces to camera in their waders.

But while 229 properties in Fishlake were affected by floods, another 1,500 across Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, South Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire have also been devastated since 7 November.

One of the worst hit areas was Bassetlaw, the most northerly district of Nottinghamshire, where around 300 homes and businesses were flooded. About 200 were in the town of Worksop, where two homeless men almost drowned when they became trapped in an industrial wheelie bin they had been sleeping in.

“It feels like we have been forgotten a bit,” said Kathy Frankland, a Cliff Richard mega-fan who had to be rescued by dinghy from the Riverside Caravan Park, where she has been the site manager for 23 years. Her own caravan was ruined, along with 15 others, and her car was a write-off.

Like many in Worksop, including Bassetlaw’s council leader, Simon Greaves, Frankland believes the flooding could have been avoided. At 8am on Thursday, 7 November, she says she made the first of many calls to the floods emergency line run by the Canal and River Trust, which looks after Britain’s waterways, asking them to open a sluice gate that would divert water out of the River Ryton into the Chesterfield Canal.

Council employees made similar pleas, but all fell on deaf ears at the Canal and River Trust, said Greaves. Eventually, shortly before midnight, he watched as the fire service opened the gate.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jonathan Stiff, proprietor of Top Locks hairdressers in Worksop: ‘I’ve just found out my insurance isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’ Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

Eight days later, last Friday, the Trust insisted that the sluice was not designed to drain the river. “Definitively, it would not have alleviated the flooding in the town. The water would have stayed in the area as the feeder, canal and river all run in parallel a very short distance apart,” said a spokesman.

Greaves rejects what he thinks is an “excuse”. He believes small towns such as his are deemed less important to protect than bigger, wealthier conurbations. “In terms of flood defence funding, we don’t have the GVA [gross value added] of Sheffield, we don’t have the million-pound properties or businesses. And priority is given for areas of what would be considered greatest economic need. I’m sure somewhere that decision makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense to me, and it doesn’t make sense if you are in a flood-damaged property in Worksop, where you were flooded in 2007 and again now and you are thinking: this is a house that I am never going to be able to sell.”

At the Top Locks hairdresser on Worksop’s Central Avenue, which backs on to the Ryton, owner Jonathan Stiff was wondering how he would pay for the damage to his shop, having just read the small print of his insurance policy.

“I’ve just found out that it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. Even though, whenever I get insurance, I start the conversation saying ‘by the way, we back on to a river’, I’ve just realised there is a clause which says the property has to be 250 metres away from a watercourse. It means it’s invalid. There is no way I can afford to pay to put this all right.”