Previous attempts to relax Sunday trading laws, including during the Covid pandemic, have met opposition from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. The report said that meant any relaxation would need to be “tightly defined and very clearly temporary”, for example only applying while a major incident has been declared.

Helen Jackson, an associate fellow at Bright Blue and the report author, said: “The disruption caused by Storm Arwen highlights the need to make our infrastructure resilient to extreme weather and be more preventative and less reactive.

“Many towns and cities in the UK are seeing repeat episodes of flash flooding affecting households, businesses, and transport systems. We need to recognise this trend and do much more to ensure our urban drainage and sewer systems can cope with heavy rainfall as the climate changes.

“This should include limiting the spread of impermeable surfaces in our cities and ensuring basic measures like drain cleaning are not overlooked.

“The recent furore over sewage spills highlighted the importance of adequate drainage and sewerage systems for environmental quality – but this is not just an environmental issue, it is a public safety issue.”