But concerned residents worry the system cannot cope with extreme weather conditions.

The Rev Ken Calder was travelling to Jacksdale for a meeting on Sunday April 27 when he found the road at Newthorpe Common flooded.

He said: "The drains were blocked so water flowed down the road. It was only a short sharp cloud burst and the drainage system just couldn't cope.

"The water was so deep that it was up to the lights on fire engines I saw going past."

Rev Calder had to come back via Codnor.

"Why do we have a drainage system that doesn't take away the water? Is it too sma"Why do we have a drainage system that doesn't take away the water? Is it too small?"

"There's so much concrete around that, if they add to it with the homes that's said to be built in the future, what will that do to the drainage system?

"I've noticed with some of the short storm bursts we've had that the drains have been blocked coming down the hill. The water has been quite awash across the road.

Water several inches deep - three or four feet across the road - forcing motorists to drive in the middle of the road."

Anna Soubry, prospective Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Broxtowe, was travelling via Long Eaton, Chilwell, Attenborough and Beeston on Sunday.

She said: "Thunderstorms and terrific downpours are nothing new but what is new is our apparent total inability to clean out drains.
"The "blame" lies fairly and squarely with our councils. We pay record amounts of Council tax but Labour squander our money and fail to deliver the services we all deserve."

A spokesperson for Broxtowe Borough Council admitted there had been issues, but said the problems had been caused by the sudden volumes of water, rather than blockages.

She said: "If there is a blocked drain issue then we should be contacted - but as far as we're aware we don't have a particular problem."

She added that Nottinghamshire County Council are making more funds available for councils to cope with the problems of flash floods.

A new report from scientists at Durham University says the UK has been lulled into a false sense of security, when we should have been preparing for a period of floods on a scale "beyond most people's living memory".

The scientists looked at rainfall and river flow patterns over the last 250 years, since 1753.

They found that the UK's weather fluctuated between very wet and very dry periods, each lasting for a few years at a time, but also between very long periods of a few decades that can be particularly wet or particularly dry.

They discovered that from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, the UK was relatively flood-free.

Now, they say records show we can expect a period of increased flooding, similar to that experienced before the 1960s.

Professor Stuart Lane from Durham's Institute of Hazard and Risk said: "We are now having to learn to live with levels of flooding that are beyond most people's living memory.

"More than three-quarters of country's flood records - on which risk estimates were based - started during the 1960s.

"We have not been good at recognising just how flood-prone we can be. We have probably underestimated the frequency of flooding much more often than we are used to."

May, June and July last year saw their highest level of rainfall since British records began.

A second report out this week from the cross party Environment Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee says the infrastructure set up to deal with last summer's floods is in chaos and the eight hundred million pounds funding pledged by the Government is "inadequate."