Government infrastructure advisor lists likely recommendations on surface water flooding

The “appropriate level of investment’ to achieve long-term resilience standards for surface water flooding along with proposals for how costs might fall between bill payers and taxpayers, to achieve these standards,” are among likely recommendations arising from the National Infrastructure Commission’s study on surface water flooding scheduled for November this year.

Speaking at a Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum event the commission’s chief executive, James Heath, said the level of investment was among recommendations to be expected “looking out to 2050” including timelines for implementation and the best mix of above and below ground solutions to provide greater resilience.

Heath said In the shorter term, “we will try and ensure our findings help inform the process of finalising the Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans and PR24,” adding: “the timing here is clearly challenging as we are running in parallel with those processes.”

Heath went on to add the governance of surface water flooding as “another area where we are likely to make recommendations.” Those he said might include how the organisations working to address flood risks can best work together. “At present, ownership and responsibility for constructing and maintain drainage systems does look to be quite fragmented. This leads to various challenges, including:

how we share data and knowledge more effectively between different bodies, and agree who needs to act to effect change where it is needed; and

the lack of consistency in drainage standards across different assets and realms of responsibility.”

“It’s not possible or indeed desirable to try and stop all surface flooding from happening,” Heath said, adding: “Rather, surface water flooding should be treated as a tolerable risk problem.” The key policy decisions he said should first be “the scale and frequency of surface flooding incidents that we as a society deem acceptable,” followed by “the appropriate solutions based on cost-benefit analysis.”