Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made with enacting Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.

The Government is strongly committed to improving the implementation of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS).

In December 2024 we made changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) to support increased delivery of SuDS. The NPPF now requires all development to utilise SuDS where they could have drainage impacts. These systems should be appropriate to the nature and scale of the proposed development.

We consulted on a revised version of the NPPF, with new policies on local plans and national decision making, including flood risk and SuDS, and are now in the process of considering next steps.

Better delivery of SuDS may be achieved by continuing to improve the current planning policy-based approach and looking at ways of improving the approach to adoption and maintenance, rather than commencing Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.