And the just-retired council emergency planning officer believes, if current trends are anything to go by, that certain things appear to be getting worse.

“We have been responding to floods on an increasingly frequent basis and the nature of the events seems to be becoming more severe,” he told us.

“Flash flooding events in the spring and summer months seem to be a particular feature. Whether this is due to climate change or some other cause I am not qualified to say.”

Improved flood protection “will take some years to deliver and people who live in at-risk areas need to take flooding seriously, and take steps to protect their own homes, ” he warned.

Mr Hogarth, a former policeman who lives in Selkirk, retired at the end of January after 10 years with Scottish Borders Council where he planned for disasters at Torness nuclear power station, flooding, terrorist attacks and other civil emergencies.

“I liked the variety of work – you never knew in the morning what the day would bring and your planning took you into a whole lot of areas. A lot of work was done on a regional basis – the Lothians and Borders – working with colleagues from other councils, the police and other agencies almost daily. That’s what made the job interesting,” he said.

The 61-year-old, from Peebles originally, trained as an engineer before joining the police aged 20. By the time he left he was the superintendent in charge of operations in the Borders, and then joined the council.

“On my first day as emergency planning officer the coastguard reported an oil slick off the Berwickshire coast, a pointer for things to come and my first months saw involvement in flooding, a national fuel crisis due to industrial action, severe winter weather (February/March 2001) with widespread and prolonged loss of electrical supplies.

“I recall driving home on Sunday in early March following the reconnection of the final electrical faults when I received a telephone call advising me that foot-and-mouth restrictions were being placed on a farm in Berwickshire.”

The council decided to call in the army from the start and set up a logistics base in Tweedbank – key decisions in containing the disease, he says.

“I saw first-hand how the veterinary managers wrestled daily with difficult decisions in relation to the culling of large numbers of animals, well understanding the impact this would have on the people involved. I recall the pressure everyone involved felt as we struggled to contain the disease. It had such a dramatic effect on so many people.”

There were serious floods almost every year and he particularly cites the 2003 flash flood hitting the Bannerfield estate in Selkirk and Broadmeadows, and the October 2005 floods in Hawick and Newcastleton

“They brought home the misery flooding brings to people whose homes and businesses are affected.