Flooding in Warwickshire

Like the rest of the UK, Warwickshire is likely to face increased levels of flooding because of climate change. Mark Banning, Assistant Drainage Engineer in the Flood Risk and Water Management team at Warwickshire County Council (WCC), has written this blog to explain how he and his colleagues are working to find ways of working with the forces of nature, including water.

Working with developers

We already expect all developers to adopt the principals of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), when proposing or planning new developments.  

As a statutory consultee on all major planning applications in the county, WCC works with developers to influence and guide this design and verify its appropriateness. We actively seek to manage risks in a number of ways and aim to ensure that any granted development is carried out in an appropriate and sustainable manner.   

SuDS schemes are designed to control surface water run-off and mimic natural systems as closely as possible. Often you may see new developments built with attenuation, or storage, ponds. These aim to capture flows from the development site during a storm event, releasing them in a controlled manner after the storm.  

Developers will be required to demonstrate as part of their planning submission that any such SuDS feature is adequately sized for various storm periods up to and including the one in 100-year event. Given we know that patterns of climate are changing there is also a requirement to make an allowance of 40% in this calculation for climate change.

New developments should not be viewed negatively and often provide wider benefits. In the case of SuDS it is no different, and WCC expects any developer within their proposed drainage strategy to demonstrate how multiple benefits will be delivered. Typically, benefits of a SuDS based drainage strategy will include not only provision for the control of flow volumes and rates, but also improvements in water quality, biodiversity and the creation of public amenable spaces.