Staff stacking shelves at Iceland in Tolworth got a wet surprise yesterday evening when water began to pour in through the roof.

The store was flooded as torrential rain hit the borough, after lead had been stolen from the roof in the past few weeks.

Surbiton fire fighters rushed to the incident just before 8pm when alerted by the supermarket’s fire alarm, but instead of seeing flames, they were faced with a soggy store.

Crew manager David Colley said: “We sheeted the roof up and turned the power off to all the chillers and made the remaining water runoff into buckets.

“The lead could have been stolen any time in the last few weeks really as we have not had any rain for so long.”