‘You took your time’: Boris Johnson heckled on visit to flood-hit Yorkshire

Boris Johnson has been heckled on a visit to south Yorkshire six days after the region was struck by major flooding.

Residents jeered “Where’ve you been?” and “You took your time” at the prime minister as emergency workers and troops showed him details of the relief effort.

It comes amid widespread criticism of Mr Johnson and his Conservative government for a slow response to the flooding in Yorkshire and the Midlands, which claimed one life last week.

Mr Johnson insisted: “We’ve been on it round the clock.” And he later refused to apologise for the government’s handling of the crisis and said that one appropriate response to the floods would be to plant more trees.

Asked whether he would apologise to people affected by floods, the prime minister said: “I think the government, the local authorities, the emergency services and the voluntary sector have been working flat-out over the last period of days to get people back on their feet and sort out the consequences of the flooding.”

He insisted that “we will as a government make sure that everybody is protected”.

As well as providing financial assistance for those whose homes and businesses have been affected and deploying an additional 100 troops to south Yorkshire, the government will invest in long-term flood defences, including by planting trees, he said.

“We need to be investing in flood defences, flood banks, protection of all kinds,” he said after a speech in Rugby. “And I also mention the importance of planting millions of trees. It’s not an immediate solution obviously but in the long term we are going to look at the whole way in which we manage water in our landscape.”

Soldiers from the Light Dragoons were laying down sandbags in Stainforth, near Doncaster, to shore up the village’s bridge as the prime minister took time off from campaigning for the 12 December general election to view the relief efforts.

Funding for local councils to help affected households is to be made available to the tune of £500 per eligible household, with up to £2,500 available for small to medium-sized businesses that are not covered by insurance.

But the cash support was denounced as “too little too late” by Labour, which has announced its own £5.6bn funding promise for flood defences.

One local woman told Mr Johnson that she had been helping provide relief to the flooded village of Fishlake since Saturday and said the local community had been “crying out for help”.

“It’s been a real struggle,” she said.

The prime minister replied: “I’m very, very grateful to everyone in the community. Is there anything more I can do to help? Is there anything more the authorities can do? What sort of help exactly do you need? Bodies? Sandbags?”

The woman told him: “I think it’s more or less all coming in now, but it’s just a little bit too late.”

Another resident of flood-hit Stainforth told Mr Johnson: “I’m not very happy about talking to you so, if you don’t mind, I’ll just mope on with what I’m doing.”

The woman, clutching a wheelbarrow alongside the troops sent to the area to help, added: “You’ve not helped us up to press. I don’t know what you’re here today for.”

In a broadcast clip, Mr Johnson said: “I perfectly understand how people feel and you can understand the anguish a flood causes.

“The shock of seeing your property engulfed by water is huge and also the anxiety of what may still be to come and I do thank the emergency services for everything they are doing.”

But he faced criticism for refusing to talk to local newspapers during his visit.

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He did not respond to press questions about why he had waited six days to visit the area as he entered a flood-relief centre, where he was harangued by a local man shouting: “Everyone’s living in poverty. The whole country’s a joke. People are living on the streets. Kids are living on the streets. Sort it out.”

Announcing additional funding after a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee on Tuesday, Mr Johnson said it was “essential that our communities have the support they need to recover”.

Under an emergency scheme triggered by the government on Friday, local authorities dealing with the flooding can apply to have 100 per cent of eligible costs for flood response measures, such as rest centres, temporary accommodation and staff overtime, reimbursed by the government.

But Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn described the official response as “woeful”, while shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett said: “‘Too little, too late’ isn’t even the half of it.

“You can’t trust Boris Johnson to look out for the north or the Midlands or protect our communities from flooding.”

Visiting Fishlake on Tuesday, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson called on Mr Johnson to declare a national emergency, so that authorities can apply for emergency funding available from the EU.

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She said her own party would spend £5bn on flood defences.

The government’s announcement of additional help came amid fears that further bad weather could be on the way on Thursday, with the Met Office issuing a yellow warning for rain for the whole day covering a vast region from Portsmouth to Hull.

There are 34 flood warnings still in place across England, in locations from Somerset and East Sussex in the south, to as far north as the Lower River Nidd near Harrogate in Yorkshire and the Holderness Drain in east Yorkshire.

Seven flood alerts are also in place in Wales, where the Met Office is predicting further heavy rain on Wednesday.

But five severe “danger to life” warnings on the River Don in south Yorkshire have been downgraded.