A GOVERNMENT spokesman has demanded an emergency post-mortem into the floods which devastated hundreds of homes in County Durham and North Yorkshire.

Elliot Morley MP, parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, has ordered the Environment Agency to produce a report outlining how and why such mass destruction was caused when rivers broke their banks earlier this month.

It comes at a time when the agency has identified about a million properties nationally as being at "high risk" of flooding.

A further estimated 600,000 homes fall inside the boundaries of the flood plain.

Mr Morley has told the Environment Agency that he wants the document on his Whitehall desk by July 21.

He said: "I am acutely aware of the suffering experienced by many communities in Northern England, and express the Government's sympathy to all those affected."

The content of the report will include an assessment of the following:

l the impact of the flooding;

l the causes of flooding, including assessment of the contributory factors suggested by local members of the public;

l the effectiveness and timeliness of flood warnings;

l the extent to which the effects of the flood were reduced by safety measures taken after the Easter 1998 floods;

l what further lessons can be learned from these floods.

The agency wrote yesterday to flood victims in West Auckland and South Church, as part of a consultation exercise on the floods, and has said public meetings will be held in affected communities in the coming weeks.

Area flood defence manager Peter Kerr said: "We know that this is a difficult time for all those victims of flooding and recognise that they have lots of questions, particularly on the cause of the flooding and what can be done to prevent it happening again.

"The agency is committed to providing these people with the available information and this consultation exercise will allow residents to discuss existing problems and suggested solutions on an individual basis."

Bishop Auckland MP, Derek Foster, welcomed the move. He said: "The people of South Church and West Auckland must have every assurance from the Government that everything possible is being done to stop a disaster like this from happening again."