Now the clear-up begins

Homes and businesses have been left devastated and insurers fear the floods may turn out to be the UK's costliest natural disaster.

Jeffrey Salmon, managing director of Salmon Assessors, said it was likely to cost insurers over £2 billion, more than double the cost of the great hurricane of 1987.

At daybreak, low-lying parts of Lewes still resembled a huge lake but the watermark on buildings showed that flooding which split the town in two had fallen by at least 18in.

Hundreds of residents awoke in rest centres after they were forced to abandon their homes overnight.

Hundreds of homes on a housing estate in the town were evacuated as the high tide forced more water on to the streets.

Those who spent the night in the town's two rest centres were today assessing the damage.

Environment Agency spokeswoman Jo Warburton said: "The high tide in Lewes overnight did not cause as many problems as we feared. Things look set to improve today, with forecasters saying it will stay quite dry.

"River levels across the region are starting to fall but it is still one of the worst floods the region has seen for a very long time.

"It is impossible to say when people will be able to return to their homes."

Cliffe High Street in Lewes, home to dozens of independent traders, was reopened this morning.

But dozens of beer barrels could still be seen floating outside Harveys Brewery, hit yesterday when the River Ouse burst its banks.

The Cuilfail Tunnel, one of the main routes into town on the usually busy A26, was flooded when the tide rose at midnight.

The flooding yesterday inundated Uckfield town centre and affected towns across Sussex and Kent.

A clean-up operation is well under way now in Uckfield, with shopkeepers pulling the remains of their stock from their flooded properties.

The Environment Agency said the South East had two-and-a-half times the normal monthly rainfall for October by Thursday evening.