Recommendation 31

HM Government · verbatim extract Deferred

The Government has committed to delivering an integrated approach to managing water, that will help better protect communities from flooding, making them more resilient, and provide wider benefits for water resources management and the environment. Whilst Sustainable Drainage Systems and rainwater harvesting have an important part to play the overall policy is much wider. The Environment Bill will enhance the water resources management planning process. This change will complement the Environment Agency’s Meeting our future water needs: a national framework for water resources.29 This national framework sets out England’s future water needs and expectations for how regional groups working collaboratively will deliver those needs. The Government is keen to enhance collaboration between water companies and other stakeholders on planning for future water resources, which should improve future planning and resilience towards future challenges such as droughts or flooding. The Government has committed to continue taking forward the actions from the Surface Water Management Action Plan and will be providing an update on progress made to implement the plan in 2021. Alongside this, the Government will also be formally responding to the independent review into the arrangements for determining responsibility for surface water and drainage assets. Also this year the Government will respond to its consultation measures to reduce personal water use,30 which sought views on water efficiency measures, including the potential role of rainwater harvesting. The Government has committed £200m to the Flood and Coast Resilience Innovation Programme. £150m of this will be provided to 25 areas (spread across England) with the opportunity to explore and implement new ways of dealing with local flooding issues. More than half of the selected areas will tackle surface and/or groundwater flood risks. The evidence gathered from this programme will help with nationwide approaches to flood management (including Sustainable Drainage Systems) in the future. In considering the role retrofitted Sustainable Drainage Systems may play in managing surface water and mitigating surface water flood risk, the Government has commissioned a research project into how effective current strategic surface water management plans are 29 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/meeting-our-future-water-needs-a-national-framework-for- water-resources/meeting-our-future-water-needs-a-national-framework-for-water-resources-accessible- summary 30 https://consult.defra.gov.uk/water/measures-to-reduce-personal-water-use/ informing spatial planning and development management. It will also look at how they define the requirements for Sustainable Drainage Systems at a local planning authority level to reduce surface water flood risk. This research will be completed by spring 2021 and the Government will consider its conclusions and recommendations. Conclusion and Recommendation 32 & 33: Working with natural processes is an important part of a holistic approach to flood risk management. There are several initiatives that could serve as delivery vehicles for natural flood management, including the new Environmental Land Management scheme, and a catchment-based approach requires join-up between these policies to ensure that natural flood management interventions are appropriately targeted and incentivised. We recommend that the Government should scale up natural flood management, whilst ensuring that the measures are appropriate to local conditions and form part of a catchment-based approach. The new Environmental Land Management scheme provides an opportunity to do this.