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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of enacting Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 on the (a) uptake and (b) effectiveness of sustainable drainage systems on new developments.

The Government is strongly committed to improving the implementation of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) and we are looking at what additional steps might be taken to support this.

We have made some immediate 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. See paragraphs 181 and 182 of the NPPF.