EARLY on December 27th, residents of Huntington Road in York were woken by cries warning them of torrents of water gushing down the street; the River Foss had burst its banks. The flooding was the worst in the neighbourhood since the last great inundation in 1982, says one local, John. With his house situated on a slight rise, the waters lapped at his front steps but rose no further. Most of his neighbours were less fortunate: by the afternoon most of the houses had to be evacuated. Here and there a few car tops were still just visible poking above the muddy waters.

York was one of several northern cities to be swamped by the latest round of floods in Britain’s wet winter. By December 29th at least 6,700 properties had been inundated in northern England. At the time of writing (with more storms forecast), no one had died; the floods pale in comparison with recent disasters in other parts of the world (see article). But the rampaging waters, and the limp official response to them, are a problem for David Cameron, who has put the project of creating an economic “Northern Powerhouse” at the centre of his second term. “A Northern Powerhouse is nothing when it is under several feet of mucky water,” thundered the Yorkshire Evening Post. Splashing around York on December 28th, the welly-shod prime minister was heckled.

He deserved it. After entering office in 2010, he reduced flood-protection spending by one-fifth, and in spite of a splurge in 2014, after severe floods in Somerset, it has dropped back to below its level when he entered Downing Street. The cuts have resulted in hundreds of relatively cheap flood-defence schemes being cancelled, including one that could have prevented Leeds city centre flooding this week.

The Environment Agency, which administers most flood-defence spending in England, funds only defences against sea and river flooding, not surface or groundwater, which cause more than 60% of the damage done by water to houses. A “complete rethink” is needed, the agency’s acting head said this week (his unfortunate boss was found on holiday in Barbados). Climate change has increased the frequency of the intense rains that cause severe flooding; some parts of Cumbria with a one-in-100-years chance of it have been inundated three times in the past decade. Yet if central government was found wanting, the local response was little better. “It was a poor show,” complains Ken Heald, a York hairdresser, with obvious understatement. He phoned a council helpline to request sandbags for his salon, Mamselle, as soon as he saw water seeping under the front door. Nobody got back to him, nor replied to two more pleas. Overall, the council was “no help at all”, he says. And for all the talk of e-government, the online response was glitchy, too: requests for sandbags on Leeds council’s website were met with error messages. Hard-up local authorities have struggled to do much beyond leading search-and-rescue efforts. In Leeds and York, the council response mainly consisted of organising evacuations. The stripped-down service is part of a wider trend of councils “becoming more like emergency services”, says Simon Parker of the New Local Government Network, a think-tank. Forced to make deep cuts to their budgets in the past five years, they have sacrificed long-term investment: in 2010-15 councils’ capital spending fell by 25% in real terms, and their outlay on planning and development by 50%. Saving so much money without seriously denting voter satisfaction has been a marvel, but the apparently thin preparation on display this week suggests how the trick has been pulled off. In the absence of much help from government, people have helped each other. “The spirit round here has been very good,” says Mr Heald, whose neighbours have rallied to help him out; one spent hours scooping water out of his salon. Groups such as Bingley Flood Support, near Bradford, have been organising clean-up operations, using Facebook to co-ordinate efforts: in Bingley members of a local mosque have brought food, a local newspaper has donated old newsprint to soak up water, and a bouncy-castle firm has lent its van to run errands.

Social media have also eclipsed the conventional sort. Twitter and Instagram have provided updates and advice quicker than the local press, whose skeleton staff were caught on the hop over Christmas. Mr Cameron has long wanted to encourage a “Big Society” of volunteers. The floods have provided it—though perhaps not in quite the way he wanted.