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Flood and Water Management Bill

Hon. Members will know that I have spoken on flooding issues at various times in my parliamentary career. I wish to focus on the particular issue of private drains and the implications for floods. Hatton is a large village in my constituency, adjacent to the River Dove, and it flooded severely in 2000. That flood provided an object lesson in many aspects of dealing with floods. I will not go into all of them, but one critical issue related to the analysis of surface water drainage from individual properties. In many cases, householders had carried out their own works—probably innocently, as they could not have imagined that that would cause difficulties—to the front of their properties and on private driveways, which adjusted surface water drainage so that it ended up in the highway drainage system. In other instances, the topography of the village—it is very flat and close to the river—meant that the drainage system was challenged as soon as the water table rose. When we examine a planning application that involves the use of surface water drainage being applied by a householder, we have to ensure that that is genuinely sustainable in reasonable circumstances. There are situations in which that simply will not work. We also have to be honest with residents about the consequences of the often small works that they carry out for themselves on the sustainability of the public drainage system. When the Minister responds on this group, I would be interested to hear his thoughts on how we might empower the water and drainage businesses so that they audit, effectively and regularly, the exposure of their system to supposedly private drainage systems. I have another case study that has caused my staff and me a fair amount of work recently, although to my constituents' gain. In Church Gresley in my constituency, on a large housing estate mostly built in the 1990s, an observant constituent noted that he was paying for drainage and contacted his water company to say that he thought that he was draining his own property. So he was, and an audit was carried out. I arranged for the water company to test drainage systems throughout the estate, and that test discovered an erratic network—on this relatively new estate—of connections, with some houses being connected to the public system and some draining to their own systems. In both cases, there was a totally inadequate transfer of information between the developer of the estate and the water company, so that it was not aware of what it was supposed to be draining or whom they were supposed to be charging. The company refunded some residents, as allowed under the statutory powers for refunding drainage charges that should not have been charged, but it was then discovered that the entire system had not been adopted. It was therefore unsurprising that the water company did not have a proper map of the drainage system. I should point out that the location of the estate means that the drainage system would be tested in severe rainfall. It is at the side of a substantial hill—that area of the town slopes heavily—and knowledge of how the drainage system works might be material at certain times. One has to ask how thorough is the integration between the planning process and the functions of the developer—in this case the water and drainage company, Severn Trent, was remiss in allowing the estate to be constructed without any proper plans. My last local example—I have plenty of opportunities to consider these issues—is from the village of Hilton. The area in question is well established, so the remarks made about this Government giving planning consent that puts pressure on the drainage system do not apply. The houses were built many years ago and are on a private drainage system, although the residents are anxiously awaiting its transfer to Severn Trent. Fortunately the residents have not been pressed so far for repairs and other obligations, but they might be. That issue causes anxiety to individual residents, who worry about their liability for the repair of the drainage system, and also raises the issue of how genuinely separate such systems are from the public drainage network. Sometimes, consents have been granted that agree that the surface drainage works effectively in a location, when in fact it does not. In flood conditions, we soon find out where the faults are. So we need a robust testing process when such agreements are entered into at the planning stage, as well as a monitoring process that ensures that when residents carry out works—usually innocently, as I am not making any allegations—they do not prejudice the important drainage system on which a community relies.