JBA Consulting was commissioned by Castle Morpeth Council to investigate all aspects of the September 2008 disaster, from preparation to response and recovery.

But while a draft report has high praise for the recovery operation, there is a damning verdict on the initial response and 29 recommendations for improvement.

Problems highlighted include:

• No Severe Flood Warnings were issued for Middle Greens, while some alerts for official organisations were not received.

• The call for a 'major incident' may have come too late at 3.45pm on September 6, by which time four Severe Flood Warnings were in place, evacuations were being carried out, rest centres were in use and 'at risk' areas were flooding.

• Delays in evacuation meant escape routes were flooded when residents came to leave, and Police failed to evacuate Middle Greens as requested.

• Police admitted they did not appreciate the severity of the incident and had no copies of the Castle Morpeth Flood Action Plan so were unaware of evacuation destinations.

• There was a lack of clarity over the command and control of the operation, with multi-agency meetings criticised for coming too late, with poor facilities, too focused on strategy and lasting too long.

• Communication difficulties were reported as radios and mobile phones were saturated and would not work in the wet conditions. Networks were overloaded and some rescue groups had no means of re-charging phones.

• Information was not suitably logged during the flood and some was lost.

About 1,000 properties were affected by the disaster and the draft report reveals how agencies were caught out by the scale and speed of the incident.

The 'Herald' revealed in September that 198 properties registered for flood warnings in Middle Greens never received them due to an error by the Environment Agency which meant the area was downgraded in the alert system.

But there were also problems for other official bodies.

The Environment Agency issues warnings to organisations via a fax machine at Morpeth Fire Station, County Council e-mail addresses and mobile phones used by Castle Morpeth Council.

However, while it reported that messages were sent, Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service did not receive any formal warnings, other than a telephone call from the Agency about the possibility of flooding, and Northumberland County Council didn't receive any Severe Flood Warnings for Morpeth, though it did get one for Ponteland.

The review also shows problems with the Floodline service encountered by some residents.

It states: "Many reported that when calling Floodline, the operators had out of date information and advice was poor.

Download JBA Report l Download Multi-Agency Actions Report