Response from the Association of Drainage Authorities

Transcription

1 Delivering Sustainable Drainage Systems: DEFRA Consultation October 2014 Response from the Association of Drainage Authorities The Association of Drainage Authorities (ADA) is the association for water level management organisations in the United Kingdom, with over 230 members. ADA is recognised as the national representative for Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs) in England and Wales. Q1. Do you agree that the proposed revision to planning policy would deliver sustainable drainage which will be maintained? If not, why? ADA does not agree that the proposed revision to planning policy would deliver sustainable drainage which will be maintained. Following four years of prevarication by the Government since the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 (FWMA) came into force, the proposals in this most recent consultation are an abdication of responsibility for implementing Sir Michael Pitt s recommendation to encourage sustainable drainage systems to reduce flood risk from new developments. The proposals do not offer an effective solution to the increasing risk of surface water flooding in our towns and cities. The proposals represent a reversal of six years (albeit slow) progress towards implementing Sir Michael Pitt s recommendations and a waste of public resources (by Defra and upper tier local authorities) on the work to set up SuDS Approving Bodies (SABs). SuDS are not just about managing local flood risk. With good engagement and design they can deliver many more benefits (often with little additional costs, or additional costs being met by other beneficiaries a partnership approach may actually result in lower costs to the individual partners). Benefits include improving water quality, increasing biodiversity and providing better places to live, work and play. It is not clear how the new proposals can facilitate this or how they support Defra s catchment based approach to deliver England s commitments under the EU Water Framework Directive. Essentially, the proposals are passing the initiative for implementing SuDS to developers, so they decide whether SuDS are viable, and if they want SuDS they choose the option for adoption. This appears to be a continuation of the status quo, but as the intention is to only apply the planning policy to major developments, there is a real danger that the new proposals are actually weakening the current planning policy for SuDS. Liz Truss said on announcing the consultation we are determined to deliver the outstanding recommendations made by Sir Michael Pitt A key element of this is providing certainty on who will own and maintain the drainage systems in the long term. Developers and local authorities alike have been requesting certainty around planning, SuDS and development and while the proposed approach provides flexibility, it is not clear how it can meet the commitments embodied in the FWMA to encourage SuDS and provide this clarity and certainty on ownership and

2 maintenance. The decision on adoption and maintenance is left largely to the developer and the proposed options may not be sustainable over the lifetime of a development. The list of possible maintenance authorities is incomplete, as IDBs are currently engaged in SuDS maintenance, a role that could be expanded. The developer is allowed to dictate whether SuDS are viable. If the developer doesn t come up with a maintenance option the local planning authority cannot put a planning condition for SuDS on the planning permission. The proposals drop all the other key provisions of the FWMA. Oversight of SuDS is passed to lower tier planning authorities. Whilst closer linking of decisions on planning permission and approval of SuDS is to be welcomed, the SuDS approval function must be adequately resourced. No proposals are presented for how Local Planning Authorities would access the expertise or resources to do it. The proposed approach using the planning system is far weaker than the approach proposed in the FWMA, allowing the automatic right of developers to connect surface drainage to public sewers to continue and merely requiring local planning authorities to give increased weight to the provision and maintenance of sustainable drainage systems for the management of run-off, alongside other material considerations and set requirements for SuDS through planning conditions. The national standards for SuDS, already considerably watered down from the original proposals which covered water quality, amenity and biodiversity as well as quantity, will, under the new proposals, be incorporated into planning guidance. This will mean that they will no longer be statutory standards, their application will be at the discretion of local planning authorities and can only be enforced through conditions on planning permissions. Instead of the current proposals, the Government should look again at what Sir Michael Pitt reported and recommended, and at current practice in Scotland, which shows that a workable and affordable system for effective management of surface water is possible. In Scotland, SuDS implementation has become routine as a consequence of well informed and evidence-based policy, developed with the full input of the construction and water industries and drawing on a coherent and well-resourced research and development programme. Scotland s experience shows that what the development industry really needs and welcomes is a level playing field and consistency in implementation of SuDS policy and practices. With this in place, developers can rapidly adapt to good regulation, stimulating jobs and growth, and using innovation to turn a requirement into an opportunity for water to add value to development, not detract from it. ADA would be pleased to continue to work with Defra to develop a system for implementing Sir Michael Pitt s recommendations on SuDS that is fit for purpose. Q2. How should the Local Planning Authority obtain expert advice on sustainable drainage systems and their maintenance? What are the costs/benefits of different approaches? Local Planning Authorities should follow the model being adopted in other areas of public services, where resources are pooled across several authorities or bought in collectively. Advice can then be obtained from the shared service or bought in from other public bodies which have the expertise such as IDBs.

3 A multi-agency approach, which has been pioneered by some upper tier local authorities in anticipation of having a SAB responsibility, offers a way forward through partnership working with all the risk management authorities (RMAs) to achieve SuDS that are acceptable to developers as well as the RMAs. An additional benefit of the multi-agency approach is the opportunity to realise other objectives such as increased biodiversity, improved water quality and other environmental improvements, and better public open space for recreation (and sharing of costs), without reducing the effectiveness of the proposals to reduce flood risk. As a general principle, the body that will be providing the maintenance should be advising the local planning authority on the suitability of the SuDS, so that the scheme that is approved is effective and can be maintained efficiently. Paragraph 2.18 of the consultation document proposes that an IDB is consulted if the drainage system discharges in the IDB s district. However the impacts of a new SuDS outside the IDB s district may have implications for the IDB s operations, so the requirement should be to consult the IDB if the SuDS might have a material effect on the interests of the IDB. Q3. What are the impacts of different approaches for Local Planning Authorities to secure expert advice within the timescales set for determining planning applications? It would be helpful if the Government were to give some consideration to the practicalities of how Local Planning Authorities might procure this advice and how this relates to the land use planning system that it administers, and offer some options with supporting impact analysis for consideration. As the approval required for the SuDS is technical and members of the LPA planning committee may not have the level of detailed knowledge to make a technical decision, it may be that an approach similar to buildings regulations is needed, where the LPA satisfies itself that a solution is possible but the detail and formal agreements are determined at a separate time on a different time frame. Alternately, given the need to consider SuDS as an integral part of the development from the start as well as the timescales required for technical consideration, it may be better to carry out the consultations on the SuDS and its approval as part of the formal pre-application process, with the agreed SuDS being included in the planning application. Q4. Do you agree that minor size developments be exempt from the proposed revision to the planning policy and guidance? Do you think thresholds should be higher? No. Under the new proposals, the planning policy to require sustainable drainage systems would only apply to major developments (10 or more houses etc.) with drainage implications. Without strong planning controls to encourage SuDS in smaller developments there is a risk that cumulatively the large numbers of developments below the threshold will lead to increased surface water and sewer flooding.

4 With this in mind, the thresholds should be lower, the planning policy should apply to all development except minor development. Q5. What other maintenance options could be viable? Do you have examples of their use? The Bedford group of IDBs used a strategic approach to establish sub-regional integrated SuDS to align planners' aspirations of growth and IDB's requirements for sustainable drainage and flood risk management. This exemplar project delivered strategic and integrated drainage infrastructure that is maintainable in the future by a statutory authority for the benefit of the local community. The area to the south of Bedford is a growth area with the aspiration to provide 35,000 new homes plus jobs between 2001 and To manage this pressure for development in a sustainable way the IDB worked with local planning authorities and other partners through the Marston Surface Water Group. The Group produced the Surface Waters Plan (2002), which promoted strategic, integrated and maintainable SuDS. The Group wanted to avoid piecemeal drainage in private ownership, so the IDB, as statutory authority agreed to adopt the SuDS infrastructure with commuted sums from developers, to make sure assets were maintained and continue to function in the future. To facilitate good SuDS, the IDB carried out strategic modelling for the area, which the developers could adopt, develop the detailed design, and construct. This resulted in integrated SuDS for the whole development area, with individual developers responsible for the works on their land. The integrated SuDS enabled the local planning authorities, Bedford Borough Council and Central Bedfordshire Council, to allocate sustainable sites for the new development, and to produce master plans that identify opportunities for aligning development aspirations with strategic surface water drainage and flood risk mitigation facilities. The approach represents the spirit of the original intentions of the Flood and Water Management Act, whereby the statutory body is responsible for approving and adopting the SuDS, working in partnership with other organisations. Q6. What evidence do you have of expected maintenance costs? As a general point, the volume house-building industry has been promulgating the myth that SuDS are always more expensive. However, if considered as part of the development from the start, and properly maintained, SuDS should be no more expensive, and may be cheaper, than conventional piped drainage. Q7. Do you expect the approach proposed to avoid increases in maintenance costs for households and developers? Would additional measures be justified to meet this aim or improve transparency of costs for households? The consultation states that the Government intends to ensure that the cost of maintaining sustainable drainage systems [will] not add to household bills or, when paid for upfront, to the costs of building and buying a new home and the maintenance regime will be acceptable to homebuyers.

5 However it is silent on the potential costs to householders, and those downstream or upstream of them, from surface water flooding as a consequence of not installing and maintaining SuDS. Failure to provide adequate surface water drainage and its future maintenance may not immediately affect the costs of building or household bills but the costs of repairing flood damage, or the charges to repair or retrofit maintainable solutions will be generally greater than any costs associated with a welldesigned and maintained system installed at the commencement of the development. Sir Michael Pitt in his 2008 report identified that the costs of managing surface water effectively are far less than the costs of flooding on householders, businesses and the economy from the consequences of not doing so. This is a missed opportunity to provide clarity and certainty on ownership and maintenance of SuDS. The most practical way of ensuring that SuDS are maintained over the lifetime of the development is to have them adopted by a local public body, paid for by a commuted sum from the developer, or place them under the general drainage remit of water companies. In areas where drainage is managed by an IDB, the IDB would be well placed to adopt SuDS. However in other areas a more sustainable and equitable solution than the current proposals would be to revert to the proposals that were being discussed during the drafting of the FWMA, which were for the water company to adopt approved SuDS serving more than one property (or serving single properties above a specified size, e.g. a block of flats, a school, a distribution centre) with the maintenance cost being funded through the surface water element of household water bills. In either case, the automatic right of developers to connect surface runoff to public sewers would be removed and made conditional upon the drainage system being approved. The water company would manage the SuDS as part of the drainage system as in paragraphs 3.8 to 3.10 of the consultation paper (and should be able to subcontract management of SuDS to contractors managing parks and public open space or other drainage bodies such as IDBs, whilst retaining responsibility for maintenance as part of their drainage assets). As the consultation paper acknowledges in paragraph 3.10, this could result in a lowering of consumers water bills over time as the drainage system became more sustainable. If the costs of maintenance are to be met by a commuted sum, the mechanism set out in Sections 33 and 34 of the Land drainage Act 1991 provide a good model. Under this provision, any person who is under an obligation imposed on them to do any work in connection with the drainage of land (whether by way of repairing banks or walls, maintaining watercourses or otherwise) can commute this obligation to the IDB. The sum to be paid is determined by the IDB (and approved by Defra), payable either as a capital sum or a terminable annuity for a period not exceeding thirty years. This system has been proven to work well in practice. Whatever system is adopted for paying for maintenance, it must be clear and transparent. Developers and householders, although not enthusiastic about paying for services, can accommodate reasonable charges if the system is open and in place from the start. This level playing field allows developers to negotiate with land owners; and estate agents to provide advice to prospective house purchasers, at the commencement of the process allowing informed decisions to be made. Jean Venables Chief Executive 24 th October 2014