Whaley Bridge is normally home to around 6,500 people. But on August 1 parts of the town were mostly evacuated on the orders of Derbyshire Police after flooding caused potentially devastating damage at the nearby Toddbrook Reservoir. The neighbouring regions of Furness Vales and New Mills were also evacuated while emergency services and rescue teams attempted to reinforce the damaged part of the dam to prevent collapse. 

Police revealed today that 22 households have refused to evacuate the Derbyshire town despite being warned there is a “real risk of collapse”.

In total these 22 households amount to 31 people who have each been visited by police to advise them to leave the town in a bid to save their lives.

Around 1,500 homes were evacuated on Thursday with teams working around the clock to pump water from Toddbrook Reservoir and reduce the risk of collapse amid yellow weather warnings for thunderstorms and rain issued by the Met Office.

Derbyshire Police deputy chief constable Rachel Swann urged all remaining residents in the evacuation zone “in the strongest terms” to leave.

She said: “We’ve not evacuated this for no reason. We’ve evacuated this because there is a real prospect that the dam could fail, and if it fails it is catastrophic.

“People would die if they were in that evacuation zone. So those people who remain in that zone are putting their lives at risk.

“They are also putting the lives of the responders, primarily the police, at risk because we have to keep going in and speaking to them and asking them to leave.”

She added that the dam bursting would be “catastrophic” and during a residents meeting on Sunday the deputy chief revealed that the “worst case scenario” would mean residents would be displaced for one week.

Toddbrook Reservoir’s dam was built to create the reservoir to provide hydraulic power and water for the canal system and is owned by the Canal and River Trust.

A Canal and River Trust spokesman said: “We’ve made good progress with reducing the amount of water in the reservoir so far.

The organisation has said that the water in the reservoir needs to reach 8m below the normal level. 

The latest measurement was that it stood at 3.8m below the normal level.

Twenty-four large pumps are now lowering the water level by 10 cm an hour which equates to 2m every 24 hours.

During the residents meeting Derbyshire chief fire officer Terry McDermott said specialist engineers had monitored the dam wall 24 hours a day with lasers and there had been “no significant deflection” in the wall.

Mr McDermott added that six rescue boats had been deployed in the region in case the dam bursts.

Today, Derbyshire Police said that it would no longer allow residents to return to their homes until the threat was over.

Previously, residents were briefly permitted into their homes on Saturday for 15 minutes only, to collect essential items such as medicines and pets.

But they were warned they would be doing so at their own risk.

Earlier today the Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for much of northern England and the Midlands, including the area around the reservoir, until midnight.

The weather forecasters predict as 1.2-1.6 inches (30-40mm) of rainfall over a two hour period tonight.

Police have said the “risk of adverse weather” was to blame for the most recent evacuations.

Emergency responders have planned for a “potential incident” but are not yet evacuating areas surrounding the evacuation zone.

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