Publication of the Unbiased Water Fee’s Remaining Report, alongside new laws and up to date nationwide requirements, marks a serious turning level within the wider adoption of sustainable drainage techniques (SuDS) by water corporations and builders, writes Alex Stephenson, director, SuDSPlanter
The report, launched on 21 July 2025 (with key factors summarised right here), strongly helps the usage of nature-based options like SuDS to cut back storm overflows, handle flood danger and create more healthy city environments. It recommends legislative reform to embed SuDS extra extensively in drainage planning and requires stronger coordination between builders, planners and water corporations.
This aligns with latest adjustments to laws: below the Water (Particular Measures) Act, in power since 23 June 2025, water corporations in England and Wales are actually legally required to contemplate nature-based options inside their statutory Drainage and Wastewater Administration Plans. They need to clarify if and the way they’re utilizing SuDS and different interventions to cut back strain on the sewer community and mitigate floor water flooding.
In parallel, the federal government has launched new requirements for SuDS in England – the primary replace to nationwide requirements in a decade. Aimed toward designers, property builders, native authorities and different events, the non-statutory steering advises on design of SuDS for brand new developments.
SuDS ship advantages far past simply managing drainage. They improve biodiversity, enhance water high quality and create more healthy, extra engaging, resilient locations to dwell. Crucially for water corporations, they may also help cut back storm overflow spills by diverting stormwater away from sewer networks. Many varieties – comparable to engineered rain gardens or planters – additionally supply resilience to drought by storing rainwater to be used in dry durations.
New laws and nationwide requirements sign a optimistic development towards broader adoption of SuDS. As a provider of the SuDSPlanter® techniques, we work intently with the water sector – in addition to native authorities, companies and builders – to include sustainable drainage into their operations and neighborhood settings.
Many water corporations are already realising the advantages, having begun to put money into SuDS throughout AMP7 and earlier. Our planter techniques are working in all-but-one water firm catchment within the UK – together with in additional than 300 colleges.
Most lately, we partnered with Yorkshire Water to put in 49 planter techniques throughout 15 major colleges and one farm in areas susceptible to floor water flooding, capturing as much as 18,700 litres of rainwater, serving to to cut back strain on the sewer system throughout storms.
Underneath the brand new laws, efficiency knowledge like this, established by way of instantaneous drainage modelling, will probably be important for water corporations writing their drainage plans – which should now contemplate sustainable drainage. The modelling, carried out by an impartial civil engineer and hydraulics specialist, simulates how our planter techniques of various sizes, towards various roof areas, behave below a variety of moist and dry climate circumstances.
The evaluation tells us how shortly the storage will fill, how lengthy it could take to empty down and what influence every situation would have on downstream drainage. This knowledge can be utilized alongside outcomes from the real-time monitoring we undertake of our planters in situ, to evaluate their hydraulic effectivity in attenuating and controlling roof runoff.
For builders specifiers and designers, such calculations can assist planning purposes by demonstrating how any SuDS inside their designs can cut back the chance of flooding downstream.
Crucially, there may be additionally the biodiversity web acquire by creating and enhancing habitats inside developments. Our planter techniques, designed to make sure most plant well being, can show a measurable improve in biodiversity.
Upkeep
It’s good to see a bit on upkeep within the new nationwide requirements – poorly maintained SuDS can fail to ship their meant advantages. We will surely advise, these managing SuDS set up initiatives – significantly on third get together land – contemplate upkeep agreements. These ought to embrace affirmation of who will probably be accountable for sustaining the asset sooner or later.
In fact, SuDS are solely a part of wider technique for sustainable administration of wastewater – they don’t handle home waste or gray water, which require separate options – however the growing prominence of SuDS, by way of these insurance policies, is a optimistic step ahead in creating local weather resilience communities. We sit up for supporting extra organisations on this journey.
