39 RESEARCH STUDY
FUTURE-PROOFING AGAINST FLOODS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In its fi rst national assessment of ood risk for ngland, in 200, the nvironment Agency revealed that .2 million homes, or one in six properties, were at risk of ooding.
ur warming climate is only set to intensify this problem, with higher temperatures increasing evaporation, increased evaporation bringing more cloud formation, and increased cloud formation bringing more rainfall, all of which is compounded by warmer, drier ground absorbing this water far less effi ciently. nfortunately, many in construction have failed to give enough focus to such issues, and the housebuilding industry in particular has been hampered thanks to the challenges of meeting spiral- ling housing demand. As such, the temptations to build on areas already deemed at risk of ooding are ever-increasing. ven when building outside ood plains, covering greenfi eld land originally a soft, water-permeable landscape with the hard, impermeable surfaces that tend to be installed around developments, results in higher peak ows of water runoff as rainwater fails to penetrate the ground, bringing serious risks to our already vulnerable, often antiquated sewerage systems. ir ichael itt’s eview into the oods of summer 200 revealed that over two thirds of the ,000 homes affected were ooded not by swollen rivers, but by surface water runoff or surcharge from overloaded drainage systems. arge-scale solutions to ooding from rivers and seas, such as
ood walls and barriers, are well known, but other, smaller-scale solutions have arguably failed to be given prominence. ut housebuilders and developers can in fact help matters tremen- dously when it comes to excess rainfall, by employing a range of relatively simple measures available to deal with the water runoff that comes through their sites.
ustainable Drainage ystems, or ‘uD’ for short, is the collective name for a range of solutions designed to manage the drainage of surface water, and provide an alternative to, or work alongside, traditional drainage systems.
While uD can require a change of approach for some build- ers and developers with change to normal processes being an alarming proposition to many the techniques have been around for a long time now, and have been proven time and again to be
How often do you utilise SuDS in your projects?
an effective choice, specifi cally targeting surface water runoff. With advances in products, and their more frequent adoption, uD have now been proven to be cost effective too. n a wider scale, a few years after the itt eview, the nvironment Agency declared that schemes adopting the techniques can in fact reduce expected damage of ooding by at least for every 1 spent. o, with a clear need for action against ooding, and a proven, affordable solution to addressing it in the built environ- ment, why are uD not a ‘given’ in housing developments the length and breadth of the country
ousebuilder Developer has undertaken a survey to help answer this question, asking 106 housebuilders, developers and specifi ers 1 at director level if and how they have used uD, the barriers they have faced in doing so, and their opin- ions on the need for further regulation around ood prevention. he results from the survey sample has shown that, while the industry is progressing towards the adoption of uD with saying they had become more aware of ood risk management in recent years, and 2 always adopting uD as standard in their projects already only install uD in the projects occasionally, 6 rarely do so, and 1 never do so at all. here were a variety of barriers cited as reasons for this lack of uptake, with costs the most common among our respond- ents as has often been the case in our recent research surveys. his was followed by a lack of understanding, and a lack of clarity on responsibility.
Despite the presence of these barriers, however, it is imperative that ways to overcome them are found. If ngland is to be prepared for the ooding that is a certainty now, housebuilders, developers, councils and overnment must work together to implement the solutions we already have.
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