The BBC's Bernadette Kehoe: "Chaos coming to an end as rivers subside"

The Environment Agency says water levels are falling slowly in the West Midlands and Welsh borders.

But huge areas remain submerged under several feet of water and fresh downpours are expected to prompt a new new peak level surge.

The Rever Severn still threatens towns along its route

The Met Office has issued a warning of further floods after predicting that persistent heavy rain will affect Wales and western England on Monday morning.

They said the deluge would move on to the rest of England and southern and eastern Scotland in the afternoon.

The outlook for the next couple of days is not much better with the prediction of unsettled weather with showers or longer periods of rain.

At Bewdley in Worcestershire, the River Severn is flowing at 10 times its normal level for this time of year. Seven flood warnings remain in place with eight rivers on red alert.

Environment Agency spokeswoman Aima O'Connel warned that the situation was still critical with more rain predicted in the next 24 hours.

Environment Agency spokeswoman Aima O'Connel: Situation is critical

She said: "It's difficult to predict what effect it will have on river levels which are already extremely high.

"The River Severn peaked at about 21ft and in the last 24 hours it has been flowing at something like 100,000 gallons a second which is nearly 10 times the level we would expect at this time of year."

Woman dies

Emergency services in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire are still urging people to be vigilant and take extreme care.

On Saturday a 67-year-old woman died when she fell into a swollen river.

Sheila Metcalfe, from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, died after slipping from a flooded bridge into the river Lew in Ebsford village, near Okehampton, Devon.

Devon and Cornwall police said the woman, whose body was recovered by a local farmer, was walking across the bridge with a group of people when she slipped and fell in.

Knee deep: A Bewdley resident surveys the flood damage

As water levels started to fall, residents in Bewdley started to take stock of the damage the water had caused.

Tony Goodwin, who has lived in the town for 38 years, said people had coped well with the chaos.

He said: "Bits of the place that were submerged are slowly starting to reappear, but they could disappear just as quickly with more heavy rain."

The Association of British Insurers said another weekend of flooding could take the clean-up bill above the £100m mark and householders were urged to take action to protect their property.

Countryside Minister Elliot Morley, who visited Bewdley on Saturday, promised that the government would help bail out hard-hit local authorities.

Torrential pain: The floods have caused millions of pounds of damage

He said: "Where you have an exceptional event like this it sometimes involves a local authority in exceptional spending.

"If local authorities do have exceptional expenditure they can make a bid to the government and it will be dealt with sympathetically."

Meanwhile, experts are repeating warnings that changes in the global climate mean Britain should expect more extreme weather.

Professor Tim O'Rourdon from the University of East Anglia's school of environmental studies says flooding will be a more regular occurrence.

He said: "The climate variability is now much greater and the likelihood of more extreme flooding is going to be much greater."