FLOODING has become an everyday part of winter life that will continue to plague Oxfordshire, according to the county's assistant chief fire officer.

David Etheridge said people need to be realistic in the face of climate change and accept flooding as an increasingly common problem.

He said the county's fire service was fully prepared for any eventuality last week and would continue to improve its training and equipment levels.

But Mr Etheridge said: "I think we have to be realistic. What we are seeing through climate change is more flooding in the county.

"The history of that speaks for itself. In the last seven or eight years, we have seen the volume of flooding across the county increase.

"We have to accept flooding is part of everyday winter life now."

Mr Etheridge said the county's fire service had worked well with the Environment Agency and local councils during the last seven days.

He said: "As a service, we have to make sure we are as prepared as possible to deal with it.

"From our point of view, all our pre-planning for the floods paid off. We had lots of pro-active activity within the affected areas.

"We had very few calls to flooding over the whole county, but we were fully prepared had the water levels risen.

"Our future plans for around the county will be to place more dry suits on our fire engines so crews can continue to work in water above knee height.

"There will also be more training, with a new programme to provide higher qualifications to our staff."

Mr Etheridge said the fire and rescue service was committed to playing a major part in rescue and prevention.

He said: "We have no legal responsibility to respond to floods, but we are fast becoming the agency that does respond to them - be it with blue lights or at a pre-planning stage.

"This county has seen an increase in the level of flooding in the last few years and we have to make sure we can cope with that change.

"As an organisation, if we had widespread flooding over the last week, we would have been 110 per cent ready."