Ambulance crews are being pushed to "breaking point" following an unprecedented surge in 999 calls.

Almost 1,000 additional emergency calls were made in Devon and Cornwall over a two-week period this month compared with the same time last year.

Crews dealt with 10,134 emergency incidents between March 4 and 17 – a similar level of demand to New Year – compared with 9,148 calls last year.

"It's been like a New Year's Eve every day of the week," said John Oliver of the South Western Ambulance Service Trust (SWAST).

The SWAST blamed the 11% rise in call volumes across the region on the cold weather.

It urged people across the South West to consider other ways of getting health care rather than dialling 999 in the first instance.

But the union Unison claimed the rise was partly because out-of-hours calls were being diverted to the 999 emergency number.

It said ambulance crews had been "run ragged" by a combination of factors including inadequate staff provision.

Simon Newell, Unison South West regional organiser, said: "Resources are being stretched to breaking point. Ambulance crews have been busier every weekend so far in March than they are during the seven busiest hours of the year on New Year's Eve."

He added: "Lives are being put at risk because inexperienced and inadequately trained staff are dispatching more ambulances than are needed and sending them to the wrong places."

Earlier this month Plymouth's Derriford Hospital was on "black" alert, meaning it was under extreme pressure and the Royal Cornwall Hospital's major incident plan was put into action.

The ambulance trust has urged people to only call 999 in "real emergencies". Norma Lane, SWAST director of delivery, said weekends were currently proving "particularly busy."

Mr Oliver added: "Much of it is due to the cold weather which exacerbates respiratory and chest problems for patients with existing medical conditions."

"It's definitely putting a strain on resources. People are working overtime and taking on extra paid shifts. Our priority is to get the right help to the people who need it the most. But we are undoubtedly under pressure.

"There has been short-term dip in the speed of dealing with emergency calls due to finite resources. We're trying to minimise that dip in performance and offer as good a service as possible."

Unions fear ambulance crews will be put under more pressure once a new NHS 111 number for patients with urgent but not life-threatening symptoms is introduced.

The system has been delayed in Devon and Cornwall until May and June respectively, even though it is already being used in other parts of the South West.

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) is holding its spring conference at the University of Exeter this weekend. Leader Nigel Farrage will address delegates in the Great Hall, as his party considers advocating a 25% flat tax on all income over £13,000. Members will also hear proposals to load welfare payments on to debit cards that could not be used to pay for cigarettes, alcohol or satellite television. The conference will be followed by a gala dinner tonight and training day tomorrow.

Strong winds and heavy rain battered Devon and Cornwall for almost 24 hours, threatening dozens of homes with flooding and leaving roads covered in debris and surface water.

In Cornwall, a woman in her 60s was killed in the early hours when her home collapsed under the weight of a landslide thought to have been caused by a torrent of floodwater.

The body of mother-of-two Susan Norman, who had tragically only returned home on Thursday evening, was recovered by specialist search teams from the wreckage of a building in Looe yesterday afternoon.

The weather is also thought to have been a factor in a fatal rush-hour crash on the A39 in North Cornwall which claimed the life of a woman in her 40s and left another driver in hospital.

The woman, who has not been named but is from the Bude area, was thrown from her car in the impact. She was found trapped under a 4x4 in what is thought to have been a head-on crash near Kilkhampton at 7.15am.

A passenger died in a crash on the A38 in Devon during the severe weather. The single vehicle accident happened at around 5.50pm yesterday near Endsleigh Garden Centre, Ivybridge, on the Plymouth-bound carriageway, police said.

There were two people in the car, the driver and one passenger, according to police.

Eyewitnesses said that the car had left the road and gone through a hedge and into a field.

It is not known if the weather conditions were a factor in the crash.

Police, fire and ambulance attended the scene and were still there late last night, police confirmed.

In the teeth of the storm and battling 20ft seas, Devonport-based HMS Echo helped in the rescue of an injured French fisherman in the Irish Sea.

More than two-and-a-half inches (67mm) fell on some areas of the region, prompting the Environment Agency to issue 14 flood warnings across the South West.

Forecasters say there is no end in sight to the chilly weather this side of Easter, predicting dry but cold days followed by freezing nights well into next week.

Meanwhile, highways bosses fear rain-soaked roads will turn icy and crack open, reversing efforts to repair a chronic pothole problem which is already costing millions to fix.

Woman's body found after house landslide collapse

The body of a woman was yesterday found in the precarious remains of a house in Cornwall which collapsed after being hit by a landslide. Susan Norman, a mother-of-two, was the only person unaccounted for after the rear of the property in Looe was hit by mud and water in the early hours.

The force of the impact pushed out the front wall. Neighbours who went to try to help when the alarm was raised at 5am described how the whole building was moving while windows were "popping out". It was initially deemed too dangerous for firefighters to enter the remains of the house, which had been converted into three flats.

After the building was stabilised, it was searched by specialist investigators who located a body. Devon and Cornwall Police confirmed the grim discovery but said no identification had taken place. Dave King, from Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service, said: "Crews have now been able to go safely into the building. Early investigations suggest that she (Ms Norman) is in there." He said: "The building has got significant damage to it. Specialist crews have come down to assist us in propping the building up, to make it as stable as possible so we can commit firefighters inside and actually find this missing person. "It's a very fluid situation. We have to monitor the stability of the building throughout the operation. If we feel at any time that anybody is put at any risk, we will withdraw everybody and make a reassessment. "It is stable at the moment and we are carrying out a rescue operation. A significant amount of earth has moved at the back of the property and has caused the damage to the property – it (the building) has moved forward." More than a dozen residents in Sandplace Road, which has been closed for three months after another landslide nearby, were evacuated after most of the front of the building crumbled away, with debris and mud crashing on to the back of the property from the road behind it. Retired police officer Pete Temlett, who phoned the emergency services after being woken by a panicked neighbour shortly before dawn, described how everyone was in a "state of shock". The 59-year-old said: "I got a knock on the door at about 5am from the young man who lives in the top-floor flat. "He was obviously in a state of shock and said his house had collapsed and he had to escape. I immediately got dressed and went down to the house with him, but I could see it could collapse at any moment. The windows were popping out and you could see the house was moving. "My immediate thought was for the safety of the woman who lives in the bottom flat, but I couldn't go in there. I thought if I open a door it could collapse and cause her more injury." The cause of the landslide is being investigated by Cornwall Council.

Nightmare scenario as weather causes chaos on region's roads

The wave of thundering downpours which swept across the Westcountry caused chaos on the region's roads and left one driver dead, others in hospital and many injured. A woman was pronounced dead at the scene of an incident two miles outside Kilkhampton on the border of Devon and Cornwall. Emergency services were summoned at 7.15am after a silver VW Polo and Ford Maverick collided. A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police said the crash had left the car and van both in a ditch. The driver of the Polo, a woman in her 40s from the Bude area, was declared dead at the scene. Police said her next of kin were being informed. "The man who was driving a Ford Maverick was air-lifted to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth where he is said to be stable and not thought to have life-threatening injuries," said the spokesman. "He is understood to be in his early 40s and is from the Bideford area. "Officers from the serious collisions investigation team have begun a detailed investigation and are carrying out work at the scene." The road was closed while investigations were undertaken and was due to reopen last night. Police have issued an appeal to motorists who were travelling in the area at the time and who may have seen the silver Polo travelling on the A39 heading north towards Bideford to get in touch. Meanwhile a crash on the A386 in Meeth left one man in hospital and the road closed for a number of hours Emergency services were called to the Petrockstowe junction at around 1.10pm yesterday following reports of a collision. A white VW Transporter van and a silver Volvo lorry collided head on and the crash left the male driver of the Transporter with minor injuries for which he was taken to hospital by ambulance. A collision on the A361 at Tiverton left debris on the road. The road was partially blocked eastbound between the A396 Heathcoat Way junction in Tiverton and Sampford Peverell. Police said other drivers had to swerve to avoid debris after a silver Vauxhall Vectra crashed leaving the driver with minor neck injuries. Six firefighters from Mevagissey attended the scene of a single vehicle crash near the Lost Gardens of Heligan at midday yesterday. The driver was not thought to have been seriously injured. Meanwhile, three people received minor injuries in Somerset when two cars collided at Monkton Elm in Somerset. A crew and rescue tender from Taunton both attended the scene and made the vehicles safe.

Forecasters say worst of wet weather is over

Torrential downpours will give way to some sunshine as forecasters offered a glimmer of hope for the rain-drenched Westcountry. According to the Met Office, the worst of the terrible weather is behind the region and today will see a brighter picture, for Cornwall at least. A spokesman for the Exeter-based organisation said that it would be a different tale for Devon and Somerset. "It is an improving picture," she said. "West of Plymouth we have no rain on the forecast and for Cornwall it should be a bright and sunny day. "But for East of Plymouth, including Exeter, Salcombe and Torquay it will be dark, heavy and cloudy." The rain in Devon and Somerset will be heavy at times, she said. However, this will become more "fragmented and patchy" during the course of the day. The temperatures will also be split, with Cornwall experiencing milder temperatures of between eight and 10 degrees. Meanwhile in Devon it will be colder with temperatures between five and six degrees and in Somerset it will be positively chilly with the thermometer hovering around the three to four degrees mark. The Met Office says that no weather warnings have been issued for the weekend and that "the worst of the weather is over."

Perfect storm likely to be followed by a deluge of potholes

Forecasters suggest the Westcountry could be about to experience the perfect conditions for the creation of potholes: a deluge followed by a penetrating frost. Council chiefs fear that this damaging combination of weather patterns could provide a major setback to efforts to repair the region's crumbling roads.

A major survey in January revealed the huge network contains an average of 5.2 potholes for every mile, a massive 65,000 ruptures and breaches throughout the 12,500 miles in Devon and Cornwall. Local authorities need as much as £10.5 billion to bring Britain's "crumbling roads" back to a good condition, according to a report published just a week ago. Councils in England and Wales filled in more than two million potholes last year – a 29% increase on 2011, the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) calculated. At the height of the "crisis" in 2010, following a similar downpour followed by a prolonged cold snap, Devon County Council, the authority which oversees the longest road network in the country with some 8,000 miles, repaired a staggering 200,000 potholes. But despite those efforts, torrential rainfall brought large scale disruption at the end of November last year, dumping more than a month's worth of rain in just eight days. This has left councillors in Devon, where six bridges were lost, scratching their heads as to how they are going to find much of the £13 million needed to shore up the roads. The council's cabinet member for Highways Stuart Hughes yesterday said there was concern that the huge effort and expenditure could be about to face another setback. "We had made real progress tackling the numbers of potholes which had reached unprecedented levels after three harsh winters in a row," he added. "If there is still a lot of water run-off on the roads and the weather turns cold again as forecast, we could see problems with ice which will intensify the damage and weaken the roads further." In Cornwall, where frosts tend to be rarer and the road network smaller than its neighbours at around 4,500 miles, the council has filled in 7,802 potholes potholes in the ten months since the drought broke last April, but fresh damage caused in November and December could drain an extra £7 million. With each pothole repair costing somewhere between £80 and £130, the authority said managing the problem amid harsh central Government grant cuts of as much as 28% was "challenging". A spokesman for Cornwall Council said: "Our priority is to identify and repair potholes and damage to the county's principal routes. "However, these are challenging times for local authorities, with a substantial cut in government funding already placing pressure on our budget. "This has not been helped by the prolonged poor weather conditions throughout 2012 which accelerated the rate of damage to roads and created many more potholes." Devon County Council was handed a share of a £100 million fund set up by the Labour Government in 2011, after the winter freeze of 2010. It received £12.9 million in Winter Damage Grants from the Department for Transport in 2010 and 2011, funding about 800 road report schemes across Devon, covering 80 miles of roads in more than 50 communities. In 2011 the council repaired 130,000 potholes, down a third on the previous year. The authority predicts it may have to find up to £10 million to keep up with the worsening surface damage, a figure which Conservative leader John Hart, admitted members "don't know" where to find. On the rails, Network Rail reported problems yesterday, with a branch line closed near Newton Abbot and a flood warning outside Exeter.

Farmers dismayed by horrific conditions

Flooded fields and sodden ground, and no sign of spring, have added heartache to existing frustration for Westcountry farmers. Unable to get machinery on to their land, and facing mounting debts from last year's climatic catastrophe, they are now confronted with a very late spring and a farming calendar weeks behind schedule. With lambing in full swing the early mornings have been a miserable prospect for sheep farmers and shepherds striving to save new-born lambs and keep ewes dry and comfortable.

"It's absolutely horrific, particularly for anyone just starting their lambing, who are now completely in trouble," said Colin Rowland, chairman of the Devon branch of the National Farmers' Union (NFU). "You simply can't put out young lambs in this weather." Mr Rowland, who has 1,000 North Country Mule ewes lambing at Bampton, near Tiverton, said he had been up for three nights ensuring all his sheep were lambing safely. "If you haven't enough room in your lambing sheds you're in trouble," he added. "For most farmers, once they get into the second week of lambing they have enough space. "Hopefully the weather is improving and the lambs will be able to go out. Farmers make the best of what they've got – but inevitably in this weather, anyone lambing out of doors will find themselves picking up a lot of dead lambs." He has 150 pairs currently indoors and counted himself lucky only to have lost three lambs overnight, which he attributed to foxes. And there has been no sign of the Schmallenberg Virus, which causes ewes to abort or give birth to deformed lambs, he said. The region's arable farmers, too, have been hit hard by the conditions, said Mike Hambly, chairman of the regional arable sector board. "This is taking us back to square one," said Mr Hambly, who farms near Callington. "We've had such trials and tribulations with the weather, from last harvest right the way through the autumn. We were fortunate to have a break in February so we could get onto the land – but what we so badly need now is some warm sunshine to help those early crops. And there are still opportunities to plant spring barley." Long days and nights of continual rain had come just at a time when warm, dry conditions were most needed, said Andrew Butler, Devon county adviser of the NFU. "We were hoping for a good start to spring, after last year, but it just hasn't arrived," he said. "Sheep farmers are all involved in lambing right now, and though a lot of arable farmers caught up with their schedules during the cold, dry spell, this continuous rain is clearly disruptive, when the ground should be drying. "Farmers want to be cracking on with a vast range of jobs, but very wet conditions are making it impossible."

Met Office inundated as weather just gets worse

Incorrect weather forecasts are met with brickbats while accurate predictions are greeted with silence, perhaps rightly, many would say, given the money spent on expensive state-of-the-art equipment and the advances in science. Nevertheless, the Met Office's reluctance to forecast far into the future is understandable, following the backlash it received for its famously bad claim that the UK was "odds on for a barbecue summer" back in 2009. That year was a complete washout and left the Exeter-based organisation sheepish when tourism bosses responded with anger. But amid the daily battle through the latest weather front, few spare a thought for the 1,800 staff when – as has been the case all too often during the past 12 months – the weather turns extreme. Rain, wind and above all snow, generates a deluge of calls from the public, businesses and of course reporters demanding statistics, a forecast and a few colourful lines to illustrate the point. A resilience plan is in place to deal with unforeseen circumstances such as the second wettest year on record in 2012. This means staff from other departments, such as internal audit, are trained and ready to man the phones, email accounts and Twitter feeds. Helen Chivers, a press officer who briefs the media, said it is a 24/7 operation. "When the weather gets bad we get a huge increase in enquiries – we have had to bring extra people in more often in the past year than before," she added. "When the weather is extreme – particularly when it snows – we can have up to eight people on the desk dealing with enquiries. "People want to know what the weather is going to do where they are, where they are going and how the roads are." Forecasters at the Met Office yesterday revealed that temperatures had dropped two degrees below average so far this month, with no end to the cold snap in sight before the Easter holiday next weekend. This compares to the average mean temperature for March, which in Devon stands at 4.4C and in Cornwall, 5.3C, not far away from the coldest on record in 1962, when the mercury reached 3.1C and 3.9 in the two counties. Temperatures are set to drop as low as -4C in rural areas and snow is expected on Sunday and Monday. Mrs Chivers said an area of high pressure had become stuck over the UK and was bringing cold air from northern Europe and Russia. She said it was "a bit early to predict Easter" but added there was "no chance of a heatwave any time soon".See related content on the floods in Cornwall:Destructive floods bring death and misery on long night of rainForecasters say worst of wet weather is overVIDEO: Body discovered in Looe building which collapsed following landslideWoman dies after being thrown from car in two-vehicle crash on A39 at KilkhamptonVIDEO: Newlyn floods after river bursts its banks as authorities deal with widespread flooding in CornwallFriday love blog: Cornwall floods cause landslides, road closures and river flood alerts

The Environment Agency, Exeter City Council and Devon County Council have teamed up to exhibit their plans to reduce the risk of flooding in Exeter.

The exhibition, being held at the Exeter Guildhall yesterday and today, outlines how the councils will work together to help prevent up to 2,000 homes from being affected by flood damage.

The scheme also aims to provide 1,000 new jobs, protect existing businesses and jobs, reduce the risk of flooding and provide a potential £200 million economic benefit to the city.

Recent studies show that after extreme flooding over 5,000 properties, infrastructures and the local economy could be affected with the current flood defences.

George Arnison, for the Environment Agency, said: "We want a scheme which protects the city and that the people who live and work in Exeter feel happy with. Local knowledge and experience will be important in helping us to shape how flood risk is managed in Exeter, and we hope as many people as possible come in and see us over the two days."

The scheme is estimated to cost £26 million, with £6 million coming from the Government and the other £20 million coming from the councils.

Councillor Andrew Leadbetter, Devon County Council Cabinet Member for Exeter, said "The new defences will provide relief for hundreds of householders and businesses in Exeter which is why Devon County Council contributed £3 million towards the cost. We have already had officers helping to work up the scheme because we feel it is so important to the safety of so many Exeter residents."

The exhibition comes after resident meetings in areas where improvement is needed. The Environment Agency and councils will also seek the views of local interest groups and river users.

Plymouth Albion make five changes to the team that lost to Jersey two weeks ago when they travel to London Scottish today.

Herbie Stupple, Sam Matavesi, Tom Bowen, Lewis Warner and David Morton, who all came on and impressed as replacements in Albion's last match are handed starts in London.

Dropping out are Harrison Tovey, Sam Hocking, Paul Roberts, Keni Fisilau and the injured Jack Andrew.

Roberts and Hocking have been regular starters in the league this year but drop to the bench today. Recent signing Declan Cusack will be handed Albion's fly-half spot against the Exiles.

On team selection, head coach Nat Saumi, who has opted not to include Exeter Chiefs' James Phillips in his squad this week following his loan arrival, said: "We keep losing so sometimes you have to weigh up your options and give the young boys a chance.

"Sam Matavesi, Tom Bowen and Louis Warner are full of confidence at the moment.

"When they came on against Jersey they were hungry and played with confidence.

"The way they have developed hopefully they can do well for the team on Saturday.

"I am also giving Declan a chance to start at ten. It will be good to see how he goes.

"Hopefully, he will provide some spark for the team."

Young winger Warner is certainly looking forward to returning to the starting line-up and hopefully helping Albion to their first league win since beating Scottish on November 9.

"It should be really good," said Warner. "I put a couple of good performances in a few weeks back and I enjoyed coming on against Jersey and trying to make an impact.

"Unfortunately, it did not go our way against Jersey, but I am really excited about this weekend and, hopefully, I am going to put in another good performance."

He added: "We are down to the last four games of the season and all the team are really ready for them.

"We will go into this game with our heads up and hopefully give them a good game."

Scottish have won five of their last six league games to pull away from Albion.

Warner said: "We will go there with the realisation that they [Scottish] have been playing well recently and that they are a good team, but we just have to give our all.

"There is nothing to say we can't go away and put in as good a performance as we did at home against Bedford. We know what we can do and what we can achieve when we play well."

He added: "We have got these last four games and we really have to give everything as if results don't go our way it could mean relegation.

"We don't want to be cleaning out our closest at the end of the season and thinking what could we have done. But I think we are quietly confident this week."

Warner admits the team would like to end the year well for Saumi, who announced after the Jersey game that he will be leaving Albion at the end of the season.

"The news was a bit upsetting for some of the boys," said Warner. "We all enjoy Nat's coaching. At the end of the day I think everyone realises these situations happen.

"We still have four games with him and we just have to keep working hard and keep listening to him and try and achieve what we can.

"If we could get a couple of wins at the end of the season and achieve what we said we wanted to do at the beginning then that would be great."

Warner hopes he will find his try-scoring form in Albion's final four matches.

Although he has scored in the cup, he has yet to claim a Championship try. He has had one disallowed and come close on a few other occasions.

He said: "I am going to go searching as much as possible.

"I suppose I have been a bit unlucky here and there and a few chances were possibly wasted. But it would be nice to finish the season on a high."

Plymouth Albion: McAtee; Warner, Howley-Berridge, Armitage, Bowen; Cusack, Cushion (capt); Morton, Vickers, Fairbrother; Beukeboom, Stephen; Stupple, Matavesi, Carpenter. Replacements: Rowley, Roberts, Ascroft-Leigh, Rogers, Hocking, T Cowan-Dickie, Bailey.

Anton Rodgers is hoping to gain experience of first-team football after joining Exeter City on loan from npower Championship promotion-chasers Brighton & Hove Albion.

At 20 years of age, many young footballers will have played at least a handful of first-team games by now, but it is something that has eluded Rodgers, the son of Liverpool boss Brendan.

He has been something of a victim of the Seagulls' steady rise under Gus Poyet, who has perhaps overlooked the development in youth in preference of big signings, so Rodgers felt the time had come to try pastures new.

"It's nice to get away, come down and try and play some football," Rodgers said. "Obviously the team are doing well, so I am not going to play straight away or get straight into the team. I have come for the experience really.

"It's great to be in and among a first-team squad day in and day out and work for a manager like Paul Tisdale. I'm looking forward to it.

"I need to be playing football and I wanted to come here to give myself the best chance.

"Brighton are doing really well at the minute and they are going further and further. There isn't much time for the young ones at the minute, but that is how it is. Exeter are doing well and hopefully I can get a few games while I am here.

"It's difficult to get that opportunity at Brighton, but that happens in football and when you are at a good club like Brighton. Fortunately, I have been able to come to a good club like Exeter and hopefully I will get my chance here."

That opportunity could come sooner than perhaps he expected if Exeter's midfield injury crisis continues to worsen. Liam Sercombe and Matt Oakley have both been ruled out for the remainder of the campaign, while Alan Gow is still some way off a return.

Tommy Doherty is expected to return to action soon, but with only Scot Bennett, Mark Molesley, Aaron Dawson and borrowed Reading play-maker Lawson D'Ath at his disposal, Tisdale's options are limited.

However, this move is very much about the longer-term and the chance for Rodgers to establish himself as a professional footballer.

"I am getting to that age where I want to play and obviously with the team doing so well this season, it will be hard to get in," he said."Hopefully I can impress in training and if my chance comes, it comes. But if not, hopefully with a view to next season, it could happen. You never know.

"If it happened where I could come here again, then I am sure I will. It is all about opportunity and I think this experience now, until the end of the season, will stand me in good stead for that."

Another factor in Rodgers' decision to come to Exeter was the ever-increasing reputation Tisdale has in the game. The manager is renowned for taking on, coaching, improving and ultimately selling on at a profit for the club. Rodgers hopes to follow that trend.

"That was definitely a factor in me coming here. It's rare nowadays that you see a manager that has been here for so long, so that definitely attracts you," he said.

"I also know Ryan Harley from Brighton and he speaks well of him. Everyone speaks well of the manager and I'm fortunate with the position my dad is in as well that I get to know who and how he is, so it definitely attracted me.

"He's a carer, he's a people's person. He takes people's situations into consideration, he knows where I am at as a footballer."

Rodgers added: "It would mean everything to me to get my chance. I think a lot of people can take football for granted, but I am a young boy that wants to be in the first team. It's as simple as that.

"It's not about money, I want to play on those horrible wet Tuesday nights when you are away and you have to travel for miles. I want that. I want to be a part of that."

Exeter Chiefs head coach Rob Baxter is targeting a consistent finish in the Aviva Premiership to fire them back into the Heineken Cup next term.

The Devon club return to action after a three-week break when Leicester Tigers visit Sandy Park today (5pm).

Baxter's men were in fine form before two fixture-less weekends, due to the resumption of the LV= Cup.

A five-game run without a league win was brought to an end when they defeated London Welsh and they followed that success with an impressive victory at Harlequins.

Baxter said: "We have to make sure we consistently play well against the top two and top-four sides. We are starting to show those qualities but we have to make sure we ram them home on a regular basis.

"You can look at our results and you could say we would be a little bit further up the table and be a real contender in the league if certain results had gone our way.

"When we have won, we have almost thoroughly deserved to win and have been comfortable in the last ten minutes of the game. That is a little bit frustrating because it doesn't feel like we have won a lot of close games this year."

Unfortunately, Tigers were one side that managed to pull well clear of Chiefs this season during 30-8 win at Welford Road in September.

Baxter said: "We let the game slip away from us a little bit up there. We never really got control of the set-piece for various reasons.

"We have worked hard on that all year and we have different players available now.

"Carl Rimmer came in and did an absolutely fantastic job for us at the start of the season at tight-head.

"The game up there was very early on when we moved him to tight-head and he was still getting used to it.

"We lost a little bit of the control and momentum of the game and that is something Leicester are very good at.

"We have to make the game about how we want to play. That is what we have to fight to keep going."

Lock Dean Mumm and prop Hoani Tui are both recalled to the starting line-up, having missed out on the trip to Quins through injury.

Baxter is also boosted by the return of prop Brett Sturgess and Chris Whitehead who will take a place on the replacements' bench alongside Craig Mitchell and James Hanks today.

England Under-20s fly-half Henry Slade, whose impressive displays in the recent Six Nations tournament, is also in a Premership matchday squad for the first time.

Exeter Chiefs: Arscott; Nowell, Naqelevuki, Dollman, Jess; Steenson, Thomas; Rimmer, Yeandle, Tui; Mumm, Welch; White, Scaysbrook, Baxter (capt). Replacements: Whitehead, Sturgess, Mitchell, Hanks, Ewers, Chudley, Slade, Whitten.

Forecasters suggest the Westcountry could be about to experience the perfect conditions for the creation of potholes: a deluge followed by a penetrating frost.

Council chiefs fear that this damaging combination of weather patterns could provide a major setback to efforts to repair the region's crumbling roads.

A major survey in January revealed the huge network contains an average of 5.2 potholes for every mile, a massive 65,000 ruptures and breaches throughout the 12,500 miles in Devon and Cornwall.

Local authorities need as much as £10.5 billion to bring Britain's "crumbling roads" back to a good condition, according to a report published just a week ago.

Councils in England and Wales filled in more than two million potholes last year – a 29% increase on 2011, the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) calculated.

At the height of the "crisis" in 2010, following a similar downpour followed by a prolonged cold snap, Devon County Council, the authority which oversees the longest road network in the country with some 8,000 miles, repaired a staggering 200,000 potholes.

But despite those efforts, torrential rainfall brought large scale disruption at the end of November last year, dumping more than a month's worth of rain in just eight days.

This has left councillors in Devon, where six bridges were lost, scratching their heads as to how they are going to find much of the £13 million needed to shore up the roads.

The council's cabinet member for Highways Stuart Hughes yesterday said there was concern that the huge effort and expenditure could be about to face another setback. "We had made real progress tackling the numbers of potholes which had reached unprecedented levels after three harsh winters in a row," he added.

"If there is still a lot of water run-off on the roads and the weather turns cold again as forecast, we could see problems with ice which will intensify the damage and weaken the roads further."

In Cornwall, where frosts tend to be rarer and the road network smaller than its neighbours at around 4,500 miles, the council has filled in 7,802 potholes potholes in the ten months since the drought broke last April, but fresh damage caused in November and December could drain an extra £7 million.

With each pothole repair costing somewhere between £80 and £130, the authority said managing the problem amid harsh central Government grant cuts of as much as 28% was "challenging".

A spokesman for Cornwall Council said: "Our priority is to identify and repair potholes and damage to the county's principal routes.

"However, these are challenging times for local authorities, with a substantial cut in government funding already placing pressure on our budget.

"This has not been helped by the prolonged poor weather conditions throughout 2012 which accelerated the rate of damage to roads and created many more potholes."

Devon County Council was handed a share of a £100 million fund set up by the Labour Government in 2011, after the winter freeze of 2010. It received £12.9 million in Winter Damage Grants from the Department for Transport in 2010 and 2011, funding about 800 road report schemes across Devon, covering 80 miles of roads in more than 50 communities.

In 2011 the council repaired 130,000 potholes, down a third on the previous year.

The authority predicts it may have to find up to £10 million to keep up with the worsening surface damage, a figure which Conservative leader John Hart, admitted members "don't know" where to find. On the rails, Network Rail reported problems yesterday, with a branch line closed near Newton Abbot and a flood warning outside Exeter.