Policy Fellow and former planning vice-chair at Reading Council, Ayo Sokale, explores how the construction industry can meet housing targets while managing flood risk for homeowners.
The UK doesn’t have enough homes.
Decades of under-building compared with other countries has stifled growth, worsened inequality, and limited people’s quality of life.
To address this, the UK government has set an ambitious target of delivering 1.5 million homes over the current parliament.
There’s no two ways about it: planning application approvals will need to be faster.
But would this come at the expense of the environment and flood risk?
The public is increasingly concerned about flooding.
Research suggests that it's an important consideration for most home buyers today.
Flood Re, a scheme that seeks to make flood cover in household insurance policies more affordable, only covers homes built before 2009.
But what about those looking to purchase new-built houses?
Currently, planning applications for new housing fall under the remit of local authorities.
Planning officers (and committees, depending on the scale and impact of a project) are responsible for assessing proposals.
They will consult statutory bodies like the Environment Agency (EA) for flood risk advice and make decisions based on material considerations (factors relevant to how land is used).
These cover design, flood resilience, ecological impact, transport, and local infrastructure.
Sustainable drainage solutions (SuDS) have long been recognised as an important way to manage surface water and lower the risk of flooding.
With engineered and landscaped SuDS available, there are a range of options open to developers, some that can even be considered nature positive.
Sustainable drainage systems are not as complicated or as expensive as many developers fear and legislation is not at odds with housing requirements.
Fiona Barbour, technical director at Mott MacDonald
Many housing developments already implement SuDS, but instead of adopting them through the local authority, some hand over maintenance responsibilities to private management companies, paying a one-off fee.
These companies may not account for the whole life cost (WLC) of SuDS, leading to inconsistent maintenance or subpar performance.
Ultimately, this leaves frustrated homeowners stuck with high management fees or failing infrastructure.
Schedule 3 mandates that SuDS are included in all new developments.
This would require developers to fund and design SuDS in a way that ensures they’re adoptable by local authorities, not just functional at handover.
This shifts focus from short-term cost-saving to long-term resilience.
But 15 years on, Schedule 3 remains unimplemented.
Industry experts have been calling for this to change.
In 2022, an open letter was sent to the prime minister, urging the government not to delay any longer. This letter was signed by the current ICE President, Professor Jim Hall, and Past President David Balmforth, among other flooding specialists.
“Implementation is essential to addressing growing surface water flood risk, tackling the sewage pollution problem and is complementary to biodiversity net gain (BNG) and nutrient neutrality,” the letter said.
This 1.5M house building target is the perfect opportunity to implement Schedule 3.
As well as implementing Schedule 3, developers should ensure housing developments are well integrated with infrastructure.
As the ICE recently said in their paper on the topic, “infrastructure makes homes liveable and turns developments into communities”.
Integrating developments with flood defences, transport links and utilities, among other vital infrastructure, ensures that we get sustainable, future-proof homes.
National policy frameworks could be strengthened to empower councils to reject proposals that don’t demonstrate robust, adoptable flood resilience strategies.
Planning policy could go further and encourage developers to take up natural flood management solutions that address surface water while enhancing biodiversity and public spaces.
It should also require developers to future proof for long-term changes brought on by climate change.
In short, we don’t have to choose between new homes and protecting the environment.
But we do need to plan smarter, coordinate better, and commit to sustainable, resilient infrastructure.
This is made possible by integrating housing and infrastructure planning more intentionally.
If we do this, we can build communities that are ready for the future.
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