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Response to Defra consultation - Improving surface water drainage

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Government's consultation on improving surface water drainage. The incidents of summer 2007 provided an extreme example of the cost and misery that surface water flooding causes, but on a local scale such flooding can and does happen frequently.

Our drainage systems have not always been designed on a strategic basis and many have grown in a piecemeal manner in response to development. Not all can cope now and with the UK Foresight Future Flooding report identifying that flood risk in urban areas could increase two to twenty fold over the next 100 years, the impacts will get worse. In comparison, there is an established process for assessing flooding risks from rivers and the sea. 

We urge the Government to act decisively on the results of this consultation; so that a strategic approach to surface water management can be developed and the issues of surface water management planning, sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) and the automatic right to connect to the public sewer are resolved.