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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 70. I commend the Government for bringing forward the SUDS legislation. We have waited for it for a very long time, and it is crucial to water and flood risk management. Alas, I disagree with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. The importance of SUDS to flood risk management and to drainage management generally requires that the body charged with local flood risk management should make approvals for SUDS. The thinking about local flood risk management and strategy must embrace SUDS as an integral component, and that would not be possible if the approval authority were the local planning authority. I understand that many of the ways in which SUDS will be dealt with are similar to other planning issues. However, if we are going to get an integrated approach to flood risk management and drainage, the integration must happen at the level of the county and the unitary local authority, which will take a strategic view. We also run the risk of defeating one of the objects of the Bill, which is to bring clarity of responsibility and co-ordination. Having all the decision-making vested in one authority for all the factors that come together in planning for local flood risk management is incredibly important. I turn to Amendment 78. I know that there has been detailed arm-wrestling between the Government and the LGA, and the interests that the LGA represents, on the issue of funding. However, we have now got to a stage where we have seminal legislation on SUDS that is long overdue. I have been talking about the need for SUDS legislation for 15 years, if not 20, and I am getting old. I urge everyone to have the confidence that the range of options available for funding SUDS is sufficiently robust, whichever option is eventually chosen, and that we should simply move on. Day on day, we are losing time and developments are coming forward that do not have sustainable drainage associated with them and they are simply causing more and more flooding and drainage problems which we will have to remedy very rapidly in the face of climate change.