Changes in legislation, regulation and practice by a wide range of public and private bodies are needed to remove the barriers to integrated urban drainage solutions, according to a government report.
Published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the review* is designed to point the way for its best practice pilots, as well as longer-term action. The large number of stakeholders, different funding streams, and overlapping powers are preventing a strategic approach to urban flood-risk management, it concludes.
Voluntary partnerships – including initiatives in Bradford, Birmingham, Cambridge and Scotland – are commended. But central government needs to promote integrated thinking, and should consider giving one agency overall responsibility.
A national review of flooding standards is needed to plug gaps, such as responsibility for draining water from property curtilages after major floods.
Funding should be streamlined. Water companies’ five-year funding cycle is inhibiting longer-term thinking. Environment Agency funding, and even top-up cash for council urban drainage schemes, could be ring-fenced.
The review, which involved ‘brainstorming’ with experts and stakeholder interviews, also reaffirmed the pressing need for clear guidance on who should adopt SUDS (sustainable urban drainage systems) with enabling legislation and funding. Limiting the right to connect to a sewer and broadening the definition of sewerage would help increase uptake.
Local authorities are seen as the natural lead stakeholder. Their planners should make developers account for drainage and flood risk early in the process, and give greater weight to the views of sewerage undertakers and water companies as well as the EA. Local authority highway departments will need to make ‘a major cultural shift’ if they are to manage above-ground flood flows.
The review also calls for a consistent approach to flood-risk assessment, more user-friendly flood modelling tools and a GIS database of all water assets and flood pathways. www.defra.gov.uk/environ/fcd/policy/strategy/ha2.htm