By Nick Thatcher BBC correspondent in Chertsey, Surrey

More than 50 homes in the Surrey town of Chertsey have been evacuated as floods swept southern England.

Peter Weir had just finished turning his house into a dream home when the floods came.

He had spent nearly �60,000 renovating the kitchen and bathroom and building an extension. But now the smell of fresh paint competes with the stench of dirty water.

"It's now well above the level of the skirting board," he says.

"The carpets are ruined and the parquet flooring is floating. We took the whole house back to its bare bones to do it up and now this happens."

Computers have been ruined, paperwork saturated and Christmas decorations are floating in the water Local marketing firm

Just a few streets away, Wendy Burke is building a small bank of sandbags to keep the flooding from her home, Willow Cottage.

But she is worried that will not be enough.

"I'm anxious and these next few hours will be critical," she says.

"The water may not have entered the house yet but if it does I can only fight it so much. Like King Canute, I can't hold back the tide."

Across the road, staff at a small marketing company cannot enter the building.

Flood defence funding

The ground floor is already under four inches of water and the damage is said to be extensive.

"It's quite depressing", says the firm's finance director, Sheila Butcher.

"We're still trying to work out the best way to get through this. Computers have been ruined, paperwork saturated and Christmas decorations are floating in the water."

There are a lot of unhappy families Barbara Young, Environment Agency

The chief executive of the Environment Agency visited Chertsey to see the flooding for herself, wading through the streets to talk to local people.

Barbara Young told BBC News Online: "I think the worst is over but we can't rule out further properties being flooded over the next few days.

"There are a lot of unhappy families but it is a blessing that so far this winter we've not seen the scale of flooding in this country that we saw two years ago."

The one bright spot on the horizon is that the rain, for now, appears to have eased off.

Water levels in the nearby River Bourne have stabilised but still remain high.

The next few hours will be critical and only then can the task of mopping up and getting back to normal begin in earnest - a task which could take weeks, if not months.