AS the start of winter is marked with turning back of the clocks this weekend, the Environment Agency is urging people to get themselves 'winter ready'.

Last winter’s devastating floods across the north of England saw the wettest month ever recorded in the UK, with exceptional amounts of rainfall and record river flows flooding around 17,000 homes and businesses.

The Environment Agency (EA) has reached a key ‘winter ready’ milestone with all those communities affected by flooding last winter now having the same level of flood protection they had before winter 2015/16.

However, extreme weather is becoming more common so while the EA protects as many homes as possible, communities need to become more resilient to flooding and investments have been made to ensure the EA can respond more rapidly and flexibly when flooding occurs.

People are now urged to take simple steps to keep themselves safe: these include checking your flood risk online, signing up for our free flood warnings, and making a flood plan.

Before last year’s floods 8010 people were signed up to the flood warning direct service in Cumbria, this rose to 9030 in September 2016.

You can do this by visiting www.gov.uk, by signing up for free flood alerts by calling the 24-hour Floodline on 0345 988 1188 or by following @EnvAgency and #floodaware on Twitter for the latest flood updates.