wrans/answers2025-04-22 conversation_310
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-04-22)

UK Parliament Hansard data: wrans/answers2025-04-22 conversation_310

Victoria Collins:To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to ensure local planning authorities can independently verify network capacity claims where there is evidence of (a) repeated sewage discharges, (b) flooding and (c) infrastructure failure. \p Matthew Pennycook: As set out in Paragraph 7 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), the purpose of the planning system is to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development, including the provision of homes, commercial development and supporting infrastructure in a sustainable manner. Sustainable development should be pursued both through the preparation and implementation of local development plans, and the application of policies in the framework.

The government is clear that housing must come with appropriate infrastructure, including appropriate water infrastructure. We believe that strategic issues such as water capacity are best dealt with at a strategic level through the plan-making process, rather than through individual planning applications.

A key function of local development plans is to guide development to the most suitable and sustainable locations and to ensure that the associated infrastructure requirements are addressed. Effective co-operation early in the plan-making process is essential to ensuring not only that housing and infrastructure need is appropriately planned for, but that they are aligned with each other. The NPPF makes it clear that local planning authorities should collaborate with each other and with other public bodies, including infrastructure providers, to identify relevant strategic matters to be addressed, including providing for sustainable water supplies.

Water companies are under a statutory duty to provide new water and sewerage connections to residential properties, as well as planning to meet the needs of growth as part of water resource management plans, and drainage and wastewater management plans. The water resources planning guidance published by the government set out how those companies should forecast demand for water based on existing customers and planned levels of household and non-household growth, with the number of planned developments being based on published local plans. Planning applications may require information from developers on how the proposed development will be drained and wastewater dealt with, especially where a connection to a public sewage treatment plant is not feasible. Local planning authorities are encouraged to phase developments so they are not occupied until any necessary improvements to the public sewage system have been carried out, ensuring sustainable infrastructure management.

Strategic Flood Risk Assessments are the primary source of flood risk information and should be used to manage flood risk from all sources. In addition, local planning authorities are encouraged to collaborate with water companies, utilise Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans, and draw on independent technical expertise where necessary to verify network capacity claims. This approach ensures that evidence of repeated sewage discharges, flooding, and infrastructure failures is robustly assessed and addressed during the planning process.

Relevant planning practice guidance sets out that good design and mitigation measures should be secured during development, both through site-specific and non-site-specific policies on water infrastructure. The revised NPPF published on 12 December 2024 makes clear that developments of all sizes should use sustainable drainage techniques when the development could have drainage impacts and should have appropriate maintenance arrangements in place. We continue to explore whether more needs to be done to ensure sustainable drainage technologies are taken up more widely in new development, either through planning policy or by commencing schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, and a decision on the best way forward will be made in the coming months.

Ensuring that we take a strategic spatial planning approach to the management of water, including tackling pollution and managing pressures on the water environment at a catchment, regional and national scale, is a core objective of the ongoing independent review into the regulatory system of the water sector, launched in October 2024 by the UK and Welsh Governments. The review is expected to report next year, and we will carefully consider its findings.