Environment secretary George Eustice has defended Boris Johnson for defying calls to visit flood-stricken areas.

He told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday that the “first thing” the prime minister told him last week when he was appointed to the role was that there were storms incoming.

“It was agreed that I would make a visit to look at our preparedness over that weekend,” Eustice said.

“It’s not true that the prime minister’s not been engaged in this. From the very moment he appointed me he’s been engaged. We stood up a national flood response centre and there have been daily conference calls that I’ve led.

“And in a cabinet government it’s not a one-man show, it’s right that on certain operational things such as this that the prime minister will ask one of his cabinet members to lead, I can’t see anything wrong with that.”

Eustice said it was not “necessary” to assemble the government’s emergency Cobra response to the floods as there was already a system in place.

It came after Tory Craig Whittaker, the MP for flood-hit Calder Valley said the government’s response was “not good enough”.

Communities are bracing themselves as further bands of torrential rain began sweeping across Britain on Sunday with no end in sight to the winter storms.

A yellow weather warning has been issued for heavy rain on Sunday morning in an already soaked South Wales as yet another wave of torrential rain moved over the country from the south-west.

Forecasters said this will give way to more showery weather as the day progresses but the storm will sweep in again on Sunday night, bringing rain and high winds to many areas and snow to parts of Scotland and northern England on Monday.

While the extreme weather should settle down over Tuesday and Wednesday, the Met Office said further heavy rain is expected later in the week.

The bleak outlook follows more than a fortnight of downpours and flooding that started with Storm Ciara, continued with Storm Dennis and then kept going with the storms over the weekend, which – contrary to some reports – have not been named by the Met Office.

The number of flood warnings in force in England dropped slightly on Saturday  afternoon as the rain relented in many areas – albeit with gale-force winds continuing in the north.

On Saturday night, five flood warnings remained in force across Wales – mainly on the River Severn and River Dee – with 23 flood alerts.

In England, the two severe flood warnings on the River Lugg, in Herefordshire, were downgraded but 74 flood warnings and 170 flood alerts remained in place.