UK weather: Storm Babet forces evacuations in red alert area of Angus due to floods
Hundreds of residents in northeast Scotland at risk of flooding are to be evacuated as Storm Babet sweeps across the country.
A severe flood warning is set to be put in place for the River South Esk area, Angus Council has said.
The council has identified 335 homes in Brechin and 87 in Tannadice and Finavon where residents will be asked to “evacuate for their own safety”.
The local authority has set up three rest centres for all those affected.
Those that have been evacuated or need shelter can go to Brechin Community Campus, Montrose Sports Centre or Forfar Community Campus.
The council said: “Please bring your own sleeping bags, pillows, blankets and any medication you need.”
Live: The latest Storm Babet news
Brechin resident John Stewart with his flood defence
A map showing the areas where people have been ordered to evacuate
Brechin resident John Stewart, 82, said he has no intention of leaving his home.
The pensioner said he has built a wall around his garden and has a floodgate in place to protect his house from water damage.
Mr Stewart said he can’t leave because his “wife’s not well” and is prepared to take the risk.
SEPA is concerned the River South Esk in Brechin will burst its banks
A section of the A933 near Brechin is now impassable due to a fallen tree
Earlier in the day, First Minister Humza Yousaf warned all those in Scotland to “please listen to the advice wherever you are in the country”.
He added: “And to those particularly that are in the red weather warning area, my message is a simple one: Listen to the advice, do not travel.
“We know there is going to be significant disruption. There could be harm to people if they do not listen to that advice.”
It comes as severe weather warnings are in place in parts of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland as Storm Babet hits the UK.
A workman clears the drains in the village of Edzell in Angus
The downpour has already caused disruption to Scotland’s transport network.
A number of ScotRail and Stagecoach services have been cancelled, and around 10,000 homes in Scotland have been affected by power cuts due to the storm.
The RNLI is advising people to stay away from the coast, highlighting the risk of being washed out to sea, and the British Geological Survey has also warned that the storm could cause landslides in areas where the weather is the worst.
Aberdeenshire Council said it will be setting up rest centres in Stonehaven and Laurencekirk for residents unable to remain in their homes.
The local authority has also postponed funerals until next week due to the weather.
A Brechin resident stacking sandbags outside a door
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has issued 12 flood alerts and eight flood warnings.
In England, the Environment Agency issued five flood warnings – mostly in the North East – and 36 flood alerts, mostly in the Midlands.
An amber warning of rain has been issued for parts of northern England and parts of northern Wales. The warning lasts from midday tomorrow until 6am on Saturday.
The flooding in Midleton, Co Cork
Areas under the warning include Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham, Chester and Bradford.
Ireland was the first to get the brunt of Storm Babet as it swept in from the Atlantic.
Members of the Irish Defence Forces had to be deployed in the town of Midleton, Co Cork, in the south of Ireland, where more than 100 properties were flooded.
A flood defence barrier erected in Edzell’s Church Street
The local council said more than a month’s worth of rain had fallen in the space of 24 hours.
Brechin is within the Met Office’s red warning area. The worst of the rain is expected between 6pm on Thursday and 12pm on Friday.
Up to 220mm of rain is forecast in some areas of eastern Scotland, an amount close to the highest ever 24-hour total of 238mm at Sloy Main Adit, Argyll and Bute, in 1974.
Brechin is within the Met Office’s red warning area
The Met Office has said to expect:
• Danger to life from fast flowing or deep floodwater
• Extensive flooding to homes and businesses
• Collapsed or damaged buildings or structures
• Road closures and bus and train service delays and cancellations
• Dangerous driving conditions because of spray and flooded roads
• Loss of power and other essential services, such as gas, water and mobile phone service
• Communities completely cut off, perhaps for several days
Angus Council had already confirmed that schools and early years centres across the region would close at lunchtime on Thursday. They will remain closed on Friday.
Road teams across Angus have been actively deploying sandbags to resilience groups around vulnerable areas and buildings.
The council has a “limited supply” of sandbags available for residents.
A maximum of 20 each will be available while stocks last and can be picked up at the council’s roads depots in Brechin, Forfar and Arbroath.
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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