New Housing: Flood Risk

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do not accept the premise of the noble Baroness’s question that we cannot protect the biodiversity arrangements at the same time as dealing with flood risk. Defra established the water delivery taskforce to make sure that water companies delivered on their planned investments to provide water and wastewater capacity. The Government have worked hard to secure £104 billion of private sector investment into this and, in partnership with water companies, investors and communities, we will introduce a new water reform Bill to modernise the whole system. That will make it fit for decades, leading to clean rivers, stronger regulations and greater investment. We are focusing on both the provision of good water supplies as we build the homes that we need and protecting biodiversity. These things go hand in hand; they are not mutually exclusive.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I do not want to get into the water reform Bill too much—it is a terrible Bill and the Government ought to withdraw it—but on this issue of flood risk, the fact is that houses are still being built on places that risk flooding. Some of the solutions are much wider than just putting a few ditches around the housing project. We must think very big when considering floods, because we have to look uphill and downhill. At the moment, I feel that some of the measures are very limited in scope. Do the Government agree?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do not agree with the noble Baroness. Some amazing work has been done by the development industry to tackle and mitigate the risk of flooding. I have been to visit sites with very attractive-looking sustainable drainage systems; they not only deal with the issue of surface water and floodwater but provide fantastic environmental features for those estates. That encourages people to get involved and—to speak to the previous questioner’s point—encourages biodiversity, as well as tackling the flooding issues. Developers are doing that. We need to make sure that we share the work of those providing the best practice in this area and that everybody is working to enhance that best practice.