Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

291: After Clause 123, insert the following new Clause—
“Sustainable drainageThe Secretary of State must make provision under section 49 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 so as to bring Schedule 3 to that Act (sustainable drainage) into force in relation to England before the end of 31 December 2023, insofar as it is not already in force.”

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to Amendment 291 and others, including Amendment 312K in my name. I declare my interests as on the register. I am also co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Water, and I have been involved recently in a project yet to be published on bioresources, which was undertaken by CIWEM, Water UK and others. I have co-authored two reports, with a third on bricks and water, together with the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum.

Turning to Amendment 291, I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, not just for co-signing the amendment but for agreeing to step in had I not been able to get back from my physio appointment at the hospital. I thank the NHS for my treatment since I injured my ankle earlier this year. Amendment 291 seeks to add a new clause to the Bill relating to sustainable drainage. It asks that provision be made, under Section 49 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010,

“so as to bring Schedule 3 to that Act (sustainable drainage) into force in relation to England before the end of 31 December 2023 insofar as it is not already in force”.

It is important to note at the outset that the same provision already applies in Wales, so to me it is a fairly simple matter to introduce this. I am asking for a degree of urgency on the part of the Government to do so.

I wrote to my noble friend Lord Benyon on 9 December 2022 and received a reply from my honourable friend the Minister for Environmental Quality and Resilience in the other place, Rebecca Pow, on 20 April, some four months later. That, again, reflects the lack of urgency in this matter. I was delighted that the Government announced, and published on 10 January, results of their review, deciding to make sustainable drainage systems—SUDS, as I will call them—mandatory in all new developments. However, the less than ambitious timeline set out is to deliver this sometime during 2024, but that is by no means certain.

Two things are important about Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. One is to end the automatic right to connect, to stop the possibility that water companies are virtually obliged to connect to major new developments. As we know, these are substantial developments. The Government are committed to building some 300,000 new homes a year, and for the most part these homes are four or five-bedroomed houses. When I am not here, I spend my time mostly in rural North Yorkshire, and we have a particular need there for one or two-bedroomed homes in villages wherever possible. I do not know quite why there is an obsession to build four and five-bedroomed homes other than that is what developers seek to do.

One can imagine that four or five-bedroomed homes produce a lot of wastewater: let us call it sewage, for the avoidance of doubt. We are asking water companies to connect major new developments to antiquated piping: some of it is Edwardian and most of it is Victorian, but it needs to be replaced. It is not going to be replaced any time soon. It is grossly unfair that we are asking—obliging—water companies to fit sewage from five-bedroomed houses to pipes that, in many circumstances, simply cannot take them. I raised this at the time of the passage of the Environment Bill, now the Environment Act, because it is potentially leading to a public health disaster.

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[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

It is after 2009.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness. If the house is built after 2009, it will not be covered. I believe this is a gap in the legislation. When we were both in the other place, I visited the noble Baroness’s constituency, which was very heavily flooded in 2009. I was aghast by the number of people who could not even insure their properties for contents if they were tenants, because of the cost of that insurance. So this provision is very important indeed. I hope that my noble friend looks very kindly on Amendment 312K, to which I intend to return at a later stage.

Finally, I lend my very strong support to the other amendments in this group in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. She has prepared them very well and I think I know where they came from. Many of them are the unfinished business of the Pitt review of 2007 and many reflect the conclusions we reached in not just the reports of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of the other place, which I had the honour to chair, but the recent reports of Bricks and Water and Bricks and Water 2, and the recommendations we are going to make in Bricks and Water 3. They are that building regulations can achieve a lot towards greater resilience to future floods in properties, but we need the data that the noble Baroness is asking for in these amendments.

I believe that flood mitigation should reduce insurance premiums, where actions have been taken to make the property more resilient. There is obviously a gap in the data available but, where that data exists, we must urge all organisations to share it. I entirely support the Flood Re scheme and Build Back Better. I would like to end with a tribute to the ABI and all the work that it has done since the Flood Re scheme was introduced. With those words, I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for her introduction to this group. As she and other noble Lords are aware, I have a particular interest in flooding issues because where I live, near Cockermouth in Cumbria, we have had some particularly appalling flooding in recent years. The whole issue of flooding and adaptation resilience is becoming more and more important for the Government to consider, as we start to see the impact of climate change on our weather systems. It strikes me that the planning section of the Bill is an opportunity to try to build that kind of resilience and adaptation considerations into legislation.

I will first make some comments on the noble Baroness’s amendment on SUDS. She mentioned that surface water flooding is a relatively new risk, mainly because of the way our planning system works and how we build and what we build. This has now resulted in 3.8 million properties in England at surface water flood risk. That is a huge number. In the Government’s plans to boost the supply of new homes, sustainable drainage systems can play a pivotal role in ensuring that new properties are built in a manner that helps to manage surface water flood risk at the local level. The noble Baroness explained this extremely well in her introduction. We absolutely support her amendment on this.

We also believe that there is an urgent need to implement the Government’s policy on floods under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, as the noble Baroness mentioned. We need to ensure that we have mandatory installation in all new-build developments. It does not matter what size they are: this has to be part of the development. We welcome the Government’s recent announcement to make sustainable drainage mandatory in new developments, but they need to urgently progress with the necessary implementation phase. As the noble Baroness said, if they can do it in Wales, why can we not just get on with it here? I see the Minister nodding. With her Welsh connection, she knows what Wales can do.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, reminded us just how important this is and what a difference it could make if we just got on with it. It is frustrating that the Government so often come up with really important suggestions and things that we need to do and then we seem to just sit on those. Perhaps the Minister could explain why this has not been introduced. When will we see progression on it?

I have one last point on this. It is essential that the Environment Agency guidance on surface water flood risk is fully considered as part of the planning process. I will be interested to hear from the Minister whether the Government have plans to include this within the progression.

I turn to my amendments in the group, of which I have a number. Amendment 303 would require the Government to set minimum standards for flood resilience, flood mitigation and flood waste management in all building regulations. Amendment 304 would place a duty on the Government and local authorities to make data about flood prevention and risk available for the purpose of assisting insurers and property owners. Data is absolutely crucial if we are going to get to grips with this issue. People need to understand exactly what is what, whether they are looking for insurance or to purchase a property. Amendment 305 would require the Government to establish a certification scheme for improvements to domestic and commercial properties in England made for flood prevention or mitigation purposes and an accreditation scheme for installers of such improvements.

On that point, one of the very frustrating things after the last floods we had in West Cumbria was that when property owners, particularly in the Cockermouth area, were looking to insurers to replace the damage—whether doors, kitchen equipment, flooring or electricity installations—a certain number of insurers would not look at adaptation and mitigation for the future and would only replace like for like. That is not a sensible way forward. One reason I was keen on this amendment was to ensure that, when a building has flooded and the insurers comes in, the money is spent wisely, to either prevent flooding in the future or to make sure that costs are cheaper. For example, you do not replace a wooden kitchen or floor with the same but look at how you can improve the condition of that building for future risk.

I noticed that Amendment 312K, from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, is quite similar to some of our amendments. We strongly support what she is saying here.

I want to cover the reasoning behind my amendments. The main thing is that we believe we need much more robust planning policy around development in flood risk areas, and we need to increase our resilience to climate-related flood risk. The measures in the Bill to put greater emphasis on environmental outcomes in the planning process, and recognition of the need to protect areas at high flood risk, are very welcome, but we believe that adapting to climate change and managing flood risk is a challenge for the whole of our society.

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[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for what has been a very wide-ranging debate. It was pleasing to see the support for all the amendments in this group; I am grateful for that and thank those who have spoken. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her attempt to reassure those of us who have tabled amendments in this group, but I for one found it a bit depressing.

We recognise that surface water flooding is a relatively new concept; it was really recognised only from 2007. Flood Re was set up in 2009 and I take my noble friend Lord Caithness’s point that perhaps it did not take on board the potential for the level of floods that would follow. My noble friend has accepted that the Secretary of State is calling in these developments and we have heard that there have been a number of developments where the Environment Agency has ruled against them, the planning authority has ruled against them and the Secretary of State has approved them. This simply cannot go on, and I urge my noble friend to take away at least one of the thoughts that emerged from the debate, from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, that there should be more co-ordination and discussion between her department and Defra, which put through the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 and the Environment Act, now implemented.

We cannot have a situation where, 14 years on from Flood Re, developments are still being built when we know that the water will be displaced and will go into existing developments, and there will then be public health aspects that cause people to leave their homes. It is only when, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and me, you have visited homes and seen people in a state of severe distress that you can begin to understand the human despair. We are in a position to do something with this Bill, so I urge my noble friend to take what we have discussed back to her department and Defra and come back with government amendments before Report. Otherwise, I shall bring amendments back at that time. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 291 withdrawn.