In their report on flood prevention, MPs from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee call for an overhaul of flood management in England to tackle the rising risk to communities from climate change.
Among its recommendations, the report says that “home buyers and the wider community must be assured that new development does not increase flood risk, either at the development site or further afield.”
It says that statistics show that planning decisions for developments in high flood risk areas are “overwhelmingly being made in line with Environment Agency advice”, but adds that there are exceptions!
To tackle this, the report recommends that the government…
“impose by the end of 2017 a statutory liability on developers to meet the costs of flooding where their development fails to comply with planning requirements and increases flood risk, whether to a property sited on the new development or further afield”.
The report says that “regulations must provide for developers to avoid such liability where they comply with planning conditions: local planning authorities should be required to issue as part of planning processes a drainage certificate to confirm compliance”.
The document also recommends that “bodies with a responsibility for managing the effects of developments on surface water flows, including water and sewerage companies, become statutory consultees for planning applications”.
Elsewhere, the report says that the government must set out how its review of sustainable drainage regulations will ensure that sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDs) “are deployed to maximum effect in all new English developments”. Read the Cranleigh Society here:
http://www.cranleighsociety.org/2016/11/10/cranleigh-civic-society-meeting-defra/
At last!!!!!