THE image which appeared on the front page of The Northern Echo yesterday will be remembered for many years to come by the people of this region.

The A1, one of Britain’s most important routes, was turned into a river by one of the most sustained periods of rainfall in living memory.

A 40-mile stretch between Dishforth, in North Yorkshire, and Bradbury, in County Durham, had to be closed for nearly two days.

The force of nature cannot be underestimated and its impact often simply has to be accepted.

We don’t like the inconvenience but we live with the reality that back roads and even country A roads will sometimes get flooded. But surely a route as important to the country’s economy as the A1 should be able to cope with rain.

It is, therefore, right that the Highways Agency should be holding a full review into the circumstances surrounding the flooding of the A1. We need to know what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the future.

In particular, we need to reassess the Government’s decision to shelve plans to upgrade a dual carriageway stretch of the A1 between Leeming and Barton.

It was deemed too expensive when the coalition came to power, but we now need to know whether it would have been money well spent in view of the evidence of the last two days of chaos.

Had this happened at the gateway to the South-East, rather than the gateway to the North-East, we suspect it would have been much higher up the Government’s agenda.