A leading British academic is arguing that without major changes in the structure and behaviour of key institutions in England , including the water companies, the Cabinet Office, Defra,, the Environment Agency and Ofwat, a complete transition to adopting surface water management systems using Green Infrastructure (GI) in England will not happen.
In an Expert Focus article published on Waterbriefing today, Richard Ashley, Emeritus Professor in the Pennine Water Group in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering at the University of Sheffield, says that without such change, adherence to 200 year old practices which incur big carbon impacts and fail to take opportunities will continue.
Professor Ashley says that unlike Wales, the key institutions in England remain “pretty well stuck” in the old paradigms despite the forward-thinking expressed in the Water White Paper, the Pitt Review report in 2008 and the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. He cites stormwater management in the USA as an example of best practice, where the issue is now automatically linked with Green Infrastructure in all but a small number of States.
In his view, despite the strong GI movement in the UK , effectively linking stormwater management into GI has not happened to any significant extent and it is only in Wales that there is momentum to remove surface water from combined sewers to reduce overflows and sewer flooding.
Professor Ashley is calling for a more ‘enabling context’ in order to realize the co-benefits from managing stormwater and green infrastructure together which should identify, incentivise and reward best practice, including:
- Developers who use SuDS/GI should be allowed a more relaxed planning regime.
- Building in Zone 3 of a flood plain should not be prohibited; instead the use of the Dutch multi-level safety approach or equivalent appropriate systems should be used.
- The major English Institutions should be reformed in the way in which surface water and ideally, the water cycle is regulated and managed.
Click here to read the full article
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