Government promises imminent action on SuDS

The long-awaited implementation of policy to address surface water flooding has nudged closer to realisation, government has confirmed.

Government pledged to introduce a sustainable drainage mandate and end developer’s automatic right to connect in its Plan for Water, published last year, but neither have materialised yet.

Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 would require sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) to be built into all new build housing developments. It would also make the right to connect to public sewers conditional upon the drainage system being approved as capable of managing it.

Parliamentary under-secretary of state for environment Lord Douglas-Miller confirmed in a House of Lords debate on remuneration for water industry bosses last week that a consultation was imminent and implementation to follow.

Lord Douglas-Miller said: “Subject to final decisions on the scope, threshold and process, we expect to commence consultation on this by spring 2024 and aim to have finalised the implementation pathway by the end of 2024.”

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering, who chairs the water All Party Parliamentary Group, raised the issue as a way that government can equip water companies with necessary tools to improve their own performance.

“It is extremely important that we stop the automatic right to connect, whereby water companies are expected to connect pipes from three, four or five-bedroom homes to antiquated Victorian pipes that simply cannot take the amount of wastewater and sewage coming out of new-build houses,” Pickering said.

She added that government “must insist” on sustainable drainage systems being mandatory for all new builds, and to commit to retrofitting of SuDS to existing developments.

The Plan for Water set out that local authorities would need to establish a SuDS approval board (SAB) to oversee and advise on what developers are required to install and maintain.

“Obviously, that raises the difficult question of who will maintain the SuDS, and I can well imagine that that might be the cause of the delay we are suffering in implementing Schedule 3,” Pickering added.

Schedule 3 came into force in Wales in 2019 requiring any 100m² or more of impermeable area – buildings, roads, car parks etc – to obtain consent from the local authority.

Implementing this policy would lessen the burden on sewer networks, which in turn would help reduce the reliance on discharging from combined sewer overflows (CSOs).

Both parts of Schedule 3 were included in the National Infrastructure Commission’s report advising on reducing risks from surface water flooding.