Distinguished Academic & Researcher in Water, Environment Management, Sustainability International Development - Sustainable Cities & Communities | Climate Resilience | Public Policy & Practice.
SUDs - Water sensitive urban design and planning is one of the keys measures for building flood resilience in cities with contextual site specific opportunities at different urban scales ..
Interesting article but it’s becoming a little old. Great to see the BBC reporting on the use of SuDS across London and I agree that we need to see more. However we are 14 years on from Flood and Water Management Act and still the government is only discussing “implementation pathways” for (the now infamous) Schedule 3. In this time we have seen the SABs come into force in Wales and the impact that has made. Sustainable drainage systems are one of the best ways we have to fight flooding in urban areas without the need to impliment mega projects at the cost of billions. Whilst they do require some additional space, this space is mostly doubled up with amenity, parking or landscaping. I would also disagree with the comment in the article that states SuDS rely on regular maintainece. Whilst, like any drainage system, they require attention, when designed right they can be less maintainace intensive than traditional systems. For example, in 2006, an independent study by Soenke Borgwardt found that with zero maintainace over 10 years, permeable paving permeability reduces to 10% (which is still more than sufficient)! A traditional gully would nearly certainly be blocked by this point. It seems that we still have a way to go before we see mandatory SuDS implementation and more than certainly will be outside of this Governments term.