New Recommendations for SuDS in England

A NEW REPORT has been published providing recommendations for updating the non-statutory technical standards on Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) in England.

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) project investigated whether updating the current non-statutory technical standards could help provide for multiple benefit Sustainable Drainage Systems, and if so, what those updates might be.

The project’s findings have shaped recommendations to replace the current standards 1 to 6 with a new suite of standards. The new standards cover:

• Standard 1: Runoff destinations
• Standard 2: Everyday rainfall
• Standard 3: Extreme rainfall
• Standard 4: Water quality
• Standard 5: Amenity
• Standard 6: Biodiversity

DEFRA will use the research to inform its drainage policy development.

SuDS Standards

The report recommends that three key principles are applied when planning and designing schemes to meet the new standards. These are:

• Use of ‘a SuDS approach’
• Early and integrated design
• Embedding SuDS within the development planning process.

The new standards aim to embed SuDS in the early design of projects. Recommendations for new standards introduce a hierarchy of runoff destinations, prioritising runoff destinations that are not the sewers for flood avoidance and encourage rainwater harvesting, ground and open water discharge as preferred options.

Recommendations also consider ‘everyday rainfall’ making its retention the presumed approach to prevent runoff. Limits are stipulated for extreme rainfall events, for greenfield, brownfield and flood risk sites.

The Standards recommendations also relate to water quality and pollutant transference, as well as amenity and biodiversity requirements for the ‘multiple benefits’ SuDS.

A video explainer is available below.

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