LAST year’s summer floods, which inundated thousands of acres of countryside from Whitby in North Yorkshire to the West Country, were NOT the result of global warming, according to a report issued today by top Government scientists.

And –the good news – British summers are not getting wetter, says the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

The causes of the floods were spring rain which left the land sodden so that when heavier than normal summer rains arrived, they could not be soaked up and simply shot straight into the rivers creating torrents that broke the banks on dozens of rivers.

South Yorkshire was badly affected and large areas of Hull were flooded although the Yorkshire Dales survived without too much damage: most of the havoc occurred downstream.

The hydrology centre concludes that although the heavy rains were a “singular event” there was no evidence to link them with global warming.