Goods worth thousands of pounds have been stolen from properties flooded after Storm Desmond, Cumbria police have said.
The force has reported a small rise in burglaries compared with a weekend at this time last year, with opportunistic thieves targeting evacuated homes and businesses. Thousands of homes in Cumbria and Lancashire remain without power after extreme weather, and many residents and business owners have not yet been able to return to their properties.
In one incident on Monday, cash and alcohol with a value of £4,000 was stolen from a business in Carlisle. In a separate incident that day, two men from Workington, west Cumbria, were arrested after attempting to steal two walking sticks worth £60 from a flooded business. A day earlier, tools costing £3,000 were taken from a flooded property in Penrith, police said.
Police have stepped up patrols across the county to deter thieves, who also targeted evacuated homes after the devastating 2005 floods in Cumbria.
Supt Mark Pannone said: “People in Cumbria have really come together following the severe flooding that has occurred over the last few days, and have shown commendable community spirit across the county. Sadly, however, there is always the possibility that some criminal elements could take advantage of people’s misfortunes, and I would urge people to take some simple steps to help keep their belongings safe.
“There have been some isolated incidents of properties being targeted by a couple of opportunistic individuals, and we will be investigating these incidents thoroughly to bring those responsible to justice. Anyone who has been a victim of crime should call Cumbria police on 101 so that we can investigate, or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.”
The environment secretary, Liz Truss, has defended the government’s spending on flood protection. As local authorities continued their clean-up operation, she tried to head off a political row about whether cuts to flood defence spending and poor projections about climate change were partly to blame for the scale of flooding in the north-west.
Speaking to Sky News, Truss insisted that more would be spent on flood protection this parliament than under the coalition or under the last five years of the Labour government.
“It’s completely wrong [to say] that we are cutting flood defences. In fact, we are increasing real-terms spending on building our flood defences. We will be spending £2.3bn over the next six years,” she said, claiming the floods were an unprecedented event.
However, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, highlighted a £115m fall in spending on flood risk management this year compared with last year, when spending peaked after the floods of the winter in 2013-14.
Truss also defended the current level of spending – £2.3bn over six years – when pressed by the BBC on whether this was enough, given the almost £6bn the UK is spending on tackling the effects of climate change in poorer countries abroad over five years.
The environment secretary said the UK’s current spending would reduce the risk of flooding but could never eliminate the risk entirely.
Ministers came under pressure over their strategy on flooding as local councils bore the brunt of the clean-up and rescue efforts.
Meanwhile, communities hit by floods in southern Scotland have been warned to expect further disruption from more rain. Aileen McLeod, the Scottish environment minister, said the community spirit displayed in the Borders town of Hawick was one that all of Scotland could be proud of.
One hundred homes had to be evacuated at the weekend as Storm Desmond hit, causing the river Teviot to burst its banks. But with the potential for more wet weather in the coming days, McLeod said there could be further disruption to transport and services.
All properties affected by the substation flooding in Lancaster now have power, Electricity North West has said. A total of 1,514 remain without electricity in Cumbria, the company added.
Operations director Mark Williamson said: “We’ve now restored the vast majority of homes and businesses in Lancaster, although we are aware of some affected by local issues that remain without power.
“The substation is back online but not yet operating at full capacity. That means we need customers to conserve power as much as possible until we can fully complete repairs on the substation.”
Network Rail said trains were now able to run between Carlisle and Scotland, but delays and disruptions to services continued into Tuesday afternoon.
At least two people died as a result of Storm Desmond, which battered the country on Saturday. A man was found dead near Kendal after he tried to retrieve a barrel from a stream to prevent flooding further downstream. A 90-year-old man, Ernie Crouch, died after he was apparently blown into the side of a moving bus by strong winds near Finchley Central tube station in London on Saturday.
The Environment Agency still has 16 severe flood warnings in place for north-west England. The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for more rain this week.
David Cameron visited Carlisle on Monday, where police estimated that between 2,200 and 3,500 homes had been flooded. He said: “After every flood, the thing to do is sit down, look at the money you are spending, look at what you are building, look at what you are planning to build in the future and ask: ‘Is it enough?’”
Cumbria police have estimated that 4,881 homes were flooded across the county, saying that in the “reasonable worst-case scenario” a total of 6,455 homes could be affected. Thousands of people remain homeless.
After a huge clean-up effort, just eight schools in Cumbria remained closed on Tuesday.
The Met Office has issued a yellow “be prepared” weather warning for more rain and wind in southern Scotland and north-west England on Wednesday and Thursday. It said new rainfall records were set in the Lake District for a 24-hour period, with 341.4mm recorded on Honister Pass in the 24 hours to 6pm on Saturday. That passed the previous record during flooding on 19 November 2009, when 316.4mm was measured at Seathwaite.
Prof Dame Julia Slingo, the Met Office’s chief scientist, said it was too early to say definitively whether climate change contributed to the exceptional rainfall in Cumbria, but added: “Just as with the stormy winter of two years ago, all the evidence from fundamental physics, and our understanding of our weather systems, suggests there may be a link between climate change and record-breaking winter rainfall. Last month, we published a paper showing that for the same weather pattern, an extended period of extreme UK winter rainfall is now seven times more likely than in a world without human emissions of greenhouse gases.”
