Baroness McIntosh of Pickering:

Moved by Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

337: After Clause 87, insert the following new Clause—“Sustainable drainageThe Secretary of State must bring into force in England all uncommenced parts of Schedule 3 of the Water Management Act 2010 (sustainable drainage) within three months of the day on which this Act is passed.”Member’s explanatory statementIn England, developers have the automatic right to connect surface water arising from new homes to the public sewerage system, irrespective of whether there is capacity for this. Implementation of Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act (2010) would end this automatic right to connect and provide a framework for the approval and adoption of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), paving the way for their widespread use.

My Lords, I am delighted to have reached this small but perfectly formed group of amendments in my name. I take the opportunity to thank for their support the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—I wish her a speedy recovery for her toe—and Lady Willis of Summertown. I am very grateful to them all.

If I could declare my interests, I am co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Water and an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Flooding and Flooded Communities. I have co-authored a number of Bricks & Water reports with the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum, and I am very grateful for its support on that.

I will initially set out the contents of the amendments and then explain why I think the Government should support them or come forward with their own amendments in lieu on Report. Turning first to Amendment 337, as the Explanatory Notes make clear, developers currently have an automatic right to connect surface water arising from new homes to the public sewerage system, irrespective of whether there is capacity for it or not. Implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 would end that automatic right to connect and provide a framework for the approval and adoption of sustainable drainage systems, paving the way for their widespread use.

Currently, SUDS are used inconsistently across the country. The risk of surface water flooding is increasing significantly and will grow with the increased housing development and other development envisaged by the Bill. I remind the Committee of the work of Sir Michael Pitt, who hailed from the great county of Yorkshire— I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Gascoigne is not in his place to hear the virtues of Yorkshire. Coming from East Yorkshire, Sir Michael was well versed in the threats of flooding, and both amendments reflect his recommendations, which have still not yet been implemented.

On SUDS, I point out that Schedule 3 to the 2010 Act has been implemented in Wales, where, in large measure, it is working extremely effectively. That is another reason for us to implement it here.

I think it was in June that the Government brought forward their national standards for sustainable drains. That is why I believe that Amendment 342 is extremely timely. It adds weight to the Government’s recently introduced national standards for sustainable drainage systems by making the right to connect to the public sewer conditional on having applied the standards first. Changing the right to connect to the public sewer should be conditional on first having followed these new standards; that will provide a more robust incentive to developers to follow this guidance, in the absence of full implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. Obviously, however, my preference is that the Government will be minded to support Amendments 337 and 342.

There is another omission that I hope the Minister will address during consideration of the Bill—it is not too late—and that we have discussed before, concerning surface water run-off on our roads. Currently, highways authorities, particularly National Highways, are not held responsible for surface water, which runs off carrying all sorts of pollutants and goes into the combined sewers, forming potential floods.

I will take the amendments in reverse order to demonstrate why I believe they are needed and why the Government should support them, beginning with Amendment 342. The surface water flood risk in England has been significantly upgraded by the Environment Agency, with projections for further increases by the middle of this century. Storm sewage overflow discharges in 2024 numbered over 450,000, lasting a combined 3.6 million hours. As I mentioned, highway run-offs are a major and still unregulated problem, and water resources are a growing challenge: 5 billion litres of extra water per day will be needed by 2050 compared to today. Nutrient pollution, as we discussed in earlier debates on the Bill, is holding back housing delivery.

SUDS addresses all these challenges—many simultaneously, if they are designed well. The Government’s recently introduced national standards, to which I referred earlier, set out good practice design requirements for such multifunctional sustainable drains. As I also mentioned, the mandatory approach was recommended by the Pitt review following the summer 2007 floods, when over 55,000 people were flooded—I visited most of them at that time, so it seemed—7,000 people needed rescue, 13 people died and half a million were without mains power and water.

This approach was enacted in Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act in 2020 but has not commenced. That Act included, as part of the legislation, a modification to Section 106 of the Water Industry Act to make communication with the public sewer by developers a conditional one, not an automatic one.

I am grateful for the initial meeting I had with both the Ministers present on the front bench this evening, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. Progress is there to be made, but this is incredibly urgent, given the amount of housebuilding that is going to be undertaken through the Bill.

I believe firmly, as set out in Amendment 337, that the use of sustainable drains for all new developments in England should be mandatory, as set out under Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act. It is not exactly rocket science: if Parliament has passed an Act, we should be in a fit position to implement that Act and the measures in it.

Non-statutory technical standards for the design, operation and maintenance of SUDS, currently under review by Defra, should include the requirement for SUDS to incorporate multifunctional benefits, as set out in the SUDS manual. The automatic right for a new development to discharge surface water to existing public sewers should be removed, in accordance with the recommendation in the 2008 Pitt review.

My starting point is a very simple one. If houses are being built that are contributing to the potential to flood, we should give the developers and the water companies the right to prevent such flooding in the first place. A mandatory use of SUDS would be a first and monumental step in that regard.

In recent debates, we have not heard a great deal about green infrastructure. Green infrastructure should be the norm for homes and communities, not just concrete infrastructure. A national register of significant sustainable drainage systems needs to be developed to inform decisions and prioritise action. The proposal in the National Planning Policy Framework on maintenance responsibility for green infrastructure should be firmed up in the way that the national standards outline.

I would like to put on record the very real concerns expressed by the insurance sector, which we have not heard a great deal about during the debate today. In connection with Amendment 342, Aviva is very keen that Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act be implemented:

“In England, developers have the automatic right to connect surface water arising from new homes to the public sewerage system, irrespective of whether there is capacity for this”.

It believes that currently, SUDS are being used inconsistently, increasing the risk of surface water flooding, and that mandatory introduction of SUDS by implementing Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 is absolutely needed.

The Association of British Insurers says that managing surface water flooding needs increased and urgent focus due to the increased risk of severe surface water flooding. It states:

“we are calling on the government to implement the Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems … policy under the Flood and Water Management Act ensuring its mandatory installing in all new build developments. Implementing these measures will help to address flooding and tackle water pollution, we urge the government to urgently progress with the necessary implementation phase under Schedule 3”.

The Government have a perfect opportunity to ensure that the development that is envisaged to proceed at pace under the Bill will not contribute to future floods, by implementing Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to make sure that sustainable drains are mandatory. I take the point put to me in the meetings: that the National Policy Planning Framework states that SUDS should be built. But that is not statutory and has no legal basis whatsoever, and that is why I would like to see this written into the Bill.

Equally, one reason why Sir Michael Pitt argued that there should be an end to the automatic right to connect is that it should be for the water companies to decide whether there is a capacity in the water network to ensure that the connection is safe, is not a false connection and will not lead to greater flooding. These amendments are needed to protect the environment in the face of the housebuilding and other developments proposed under the Bill. I urge the Government to support them and I beg to move.

My Lords, very briefly, I support this Amendment. If we pass legislation, it is important that we actually commence it. As the noble Baroness so ably presented, this is a real gap and it is has become even more imperative as we seek to up the level of development. I hope that the Minister will recognise the need and agree to press forward with bringing this schedule into operation.

Given that my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed this Amendment, I just briefly reinforce what the noble Baronesses have already said. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, made the point about Laws being passed and then nothing happening. That is a problem both for industry—in this case, developers—and for local councils, which are left in a state of uncertainty, not knowing where they are going with this. People start to prepare, read up and think about it. I should perhaps declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association at this point.

There is also an issue of trust with the Government—something that we discuss often in your Lordships’ House. A classic example of this is the bottle deposit scheme that we are all still waiting for after it was announced so long ago. Many people out there still believe that, when a Government announce something, it will happen—it is already on the way. Probably more people believe that, once a law is passed, that will happen. When it does not happen, there is then a real problem with trust in the Government.

I can trace my knowledge about sustainable urban drainage schemes to 2006, when the first Green was elected to Islington Council. I can remember her talking excitedly about how crucial it was to deal with local flooding issues as well as environmental issues. I had not yet learned the phrase “slow the flow”, but that is of course very much what urban drainage is about. I also recall visiting, some years ago now, Cherry Hinton Brook near Cambridge—I bring up chalk streams again, just for one final time. I talked to local people concerned about a proposed development there, what was happening with the sustainable urban drainage scheme and how it would potentially be managed. What is crucial about Schedule 3 is that it provides a framework for construction but also for oversight of management because, very often, sustainable urban drainage schemes cannot just sit there; they have to be managed throughout their lifespan for many decades. If we do not have everything set out here—the required technical analysis, the inspections and the responsibilities —as it is in Schedule 3, then we will be stuck with schemes that have been built but are not being looked after.

My Lords, I strongly support this Amendment. To lift the curtain a little bit on life in government, it is one of my disappointments that we did not get this enacted. I perhaps have to dob people in: it was the Ministry for Housing. We had finally got there with Plan for Water, where it was adopted as a policy. We managed to get it in there and we did the review—it was all beautiful. I am pleased that the Government did the standards; they published that in July. It just needs this final push. Now that Steve Reed has moved from Defra to the Ministry for Housing, I hope that he will take full advantage of being enlightened about the benefits of ensuring that we have proper connections and sustainable drainage and, candidly, that we can get on with it and the Government take advantage of this primary legislation to ensure that it happens.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 337 and 342. I thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering for her speeches tonight. She cares about these issues deeply and I commend her for her hard work. I am sure that the Committee is united in agreement that the environment is an important factor worthy of consideration in any planning Bill. I share my noble friend’s concern about building on the flood plain. Travelling down from Carlisle to London every week, at certain times of the year I look out of the window and see that scruffy low-lying land knee-deep in water. Six months later, they are building houses on it. I wonder whether someone somewhere in government should do something about it. Thank God that it is not me.

Sustainable drainage systems can play an important role in contributing to the improvement of the places and spaces where we live and work by balancing the opportunities and challenges that influence the design and development of communities. Amendment 337 seeks to implement Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 with the hope of providing a framework for the widespread approval and adoption of a sustainable drainage system. This is an important issue, which requires due government attention. I look forward to hearing the response to the amendment. Sometime in 1992, as an Environment Minister, I was shown examples of sustainable drainage systems and how wonderful they were, but I do not think that much has happened since then.

Amendment 342 seeks to add weight to the Government’s newly introduced national standards for sustainable drainage systems, making the right to communicate with the public sewer conditional on having applied the standards first. This creates a direct incentive for developers to follow the Government’s guidance and to take the standards seriously. I hope that the Government take this amendment seriously as one possible way of enforcing the national standards for sustainable drainage systems.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for tabling these amendments and for her thorough introduction. I meant the other day to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to take our very good wishes for a speedy recovery to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who I hope is recovering quickly. I am sorry that I did not do that before.

Effective implementation of SUDS, including adoption and maintenance, can reduce the impact of new developments on sewers by adding up to 87%, creating headroom for additional developments where they may not be possible with only conventional drainage. I have previously shared with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, some of the outstanding schemes that I have seen in Sussex and with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in Cambridge. The responsible developers make provision for the ongoing maintenance of these schemes. We need to see sustainable drainage in more developments, to designs that cope with changing climatic conditions, deliver wider water infrastructure benefits and help to tackle our water pollution problems. We have already taken steps to improve the delivery of SUDS through the planning system. The update to the NPPF, published on 12 December, expanded the requirement to provide SUDS to all development with drainage implications. I restate that, although the NPPF is not a statutory document in itself, it is part of the statutory planning system.

Sewerage undertakers have the ability to refuse a connection where it appears to them that it would prejudice their network or not meet their reasonable standards. There is no automatic right to connect to a sewerage system. The Independent Water Commission, chaired by Sir Jon Cunliffe, is reviewing the water sector regulatory system in England and Wales. The UK and Welsh Governments will consider the report, including whether it has implications for the right to connect. That report should be factored in before considering any potential legislative changes to Section 106. Regardless, the Government are strongly committed to requiring standardised sustainable drainage systems, or SUDS, in new developments and are considering how best to implement our ambitions.

The Government published updated non-statutory national standards for SUDS in June 2025, which were welcomed by stakeholders as a positive step. We intend to consult on the national planning policy related to decision-making later this year, including policies on flood risk and SUDS. I will take back the noble Baroness’s point about run-off, because it would be useful to consider that at the same time. Also this year, we will consult on ending freehold estates, which will include options to reduce the prevalence of private management arrangements for community assets including SUDS. For this reason, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her Amendment.

I am grateful to all who have spoken and those who have supported the Amendment: the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who echoed my concerns about why the original legislation was not implemented; the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for reminding the House about the “slow the flow” scheme, particularly the Pickering pilot scheme that I was closely associated with; and my noble friend Lady Coffey for pointing out the reason for the blockage and delay. It is like, “We are going to do it, but just not yet”. There is a degree of urgency and let us bear in mind that, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra on the front bench pointed out, if your house was built on a flood plain since 2009, you cannot be insured, or the only insurance that you can get is probably so cripplingly expensive that you cannot afford it.

For a host of reasons, I believe that the time is now. I was told during the passage of the levelling-up Act that we would have to wait for a different opportunity. The time is now, so I will revert to this at a future stage of the Bill. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 337 withdrawn.

Amendments 338 to 346A not moved.

Amendments 346B to 346D had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.