Infrastructure commission to back natural flooding fixes

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) is due to back an expanded role for nature-based solutions to help mitigate surface water run-off into the sewer systems, its chair has revealed.

Giving the keynote address to open day two of the Utility Week Forum on Wednesday (9 November), Sir John Armitt discussed the government’s statutory infrastructure advisor’s upcoming report on surface water flooding.

While surface water flooding is the “most visible” climate adaptation problem towns and cities face, he described it as a “Cinderella” risk, partly because of complexities surrounding the governance and ownership of the drainage system.

Armitt said that it would make sense to maximise value from the £56 billion the government has identified for investment to stop sewage discharges, to seek dual purpose solutions that also reduce surface water flooding.

He said: “Reducing run off into the sewer systems in the first place is another obvious route to resilience, and you can expect recommendations from us around expanding the role of nature-based solutions as part of the mix of mitigations.”

As well as investment in new assets, the NIC chair said steps must be taken to improve the management of existing drainage assets.

He also warned that there must be an “honest conversation” with the public about the extra costs of inaction on making energy and water systems resilient to a more extreme climate.

Armitt, who oversaw the delivery of the 2012 Olympic Games before taking on his current role, said the starting point of this debate must be “transparent” decision making about the level of resilience and potential disruption society is willing to accept.

He said it is not “unreasonable” for billpayers to expect the industry to go “further and faster on leak reduction and planning new supply infrastructure to help avoid shortages in future”, particularly given that households are being asked to use less water.

“There is an unavoidable cost associated with climate resilience and it is not possible or indeed desirable to stop all risks,” he said, giving as example how it would be “prohibitively expensive” to put all of the UK’s overhead electricity cables underground to avoid storm damage.

“Investing in a planned and phased way will end up costing less than being forced to pay to deal with disruptions later. “

But he said it is the role of the government and Parliament to make these “big calls”.

And he told the forum that the NIC is “currently about a year away” from publishing its second five yearly National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA).

Armitt said that climate resilience will be one of the “three big strategic themes” of the NIA, which will inform the government’s next National Infrastructure Strategy.

He said the NIA will address both how infrastructure itself needs to become more resilient to climate change and how it can enhance society’s wider resilience to these risks.

Armitt also expressed scepticism about creating a single, over-arching regulator to oversee the existing sector watchdogs.

He said: “I’m always dubious about these single, large regulators or institutions. There are so many specialists within the individual sectors that you’re going to have to create a series of subsets of those individual regulatory models so all you’ve done is create another four sets of overheads and administration.”