News

Reset
32 posts found

Kasumi-tei: how Japan built levees with gaps in them on purpose, and why it stopped

An open levee is a flood embankment built in overlapping segments with deliberate gaps left between them, so floodwater can spread sideways onto farmland as the river rises and drain back out through the same gaps as it falls. Japan…
Posted on 18th September, 2026
 | 

Land drains on a development site: what to do when you find them

Land drains on a development site are not an obstruction to be cleared. They are somebody's drainage, they may carry water from well beyond the red line, and cutting one without a plan is the shortest route to a neighbour's…
Posted on 15th September, 2026
, in SuDS 
 | 

The oldest drainage system in the world: who actually has the claim

A stone drainage system roughly 5,000 years old was reported at Liman Tepe on the Turkish Aegean coast on 14 September 2026, and the coverage reached, as it usually does, for the superlative. It should not have. There is no…
Posted on 14th September, 2026
 | 

Medieval drainage: the moats, monks and great drains you can still go and see

Medieval drainage has a public-relations problem. The popular picture is a filthy street, a chamber pot tipped out of a window and a moat brimming with sewage. A thousand years of squalor, sitting neatly between the Romans and the Victorians.…
Posted on 8th September, 2026
 | 

Leaky Dams and Flood Risk: What They Do, Where They Work, and What They Can’t Fix

Anyone who has watched the latest series of Clarkson's Farm will have seen Jeremy Clarkson wading into a stream at Diddly Squat to build what he gleefully describes, after a bit of reading on the government's website, as "large, leaky,…
Posted on 13th June, 2026
 | 

Do SuDS count towards biodiversity net gain? What actually scores

Yes, sustainable drainage systems can count towards biodiversity net gain, but only the parts of a SuDS scheme that create real, lasting habitat, and only for what that habitat is genuinely worth. A planted basin, a wet pond or a…
Posted on 27th May, 2026
, in NPPF 
, in SuDS 
 | 

The Flood Knowledge Gap Between Communities and Institutions

In 1724, a local historian described one Berkshire village as "a low and watery place" where "water is a dominant theme … with disastrous floods, both within and beyond living memory." More than two centuries later, that village still requires…
Posted on 11th May, 2026
 | 

Nature-Based Solutions and Flood Risk: What the 2026 NPPF Now Requires

Nature-based solutions have moved from advocacy into planning policy. The National Planning Policy Framework published on 17 August 2026 defines them, asks development plans to make as much use of natural flood management as possible, and asks development proposals themselves…
Posted on 5th May, 2026
 | 

Fens 2100+ explained: what the Environment Agency’s evidence actually says

Fens 2100+ is the Environment Agency's long-term flood risk and water management programme for the Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire Fens, run in partnership with Internal Drainage Boards, local authorities and water companies. In April 2026 it published a summary baseline report,…
Posted on 28th April, 2026
 | 

Sponge cities in the UK: what the idea now means for planning and drainage

Sponge cities are urban areas built to absorb, store and slowly release rainfall instead of piping it away as fast as possible. The phrase came out of China a decade ago. In Britain it has mostly been discussed as something…
Posted on 24th April, 2026
 | 

The Land Use Framework and flood risk: what it actually changes

The Land Use Framework is the government's first national statement of how England's land should be shared between housing, farming, energy and nature. Defra published it on 18 March 2026, and it is built on flood figures that ought to…
Posted on 20th March, 2026
 | 

CIRIA C821 Explained: Community Maintenance of Flood Risk Assets

CIRIA C821 is a free three-part guidance suite, published in 2025, on how community groups can help maintain local flood risk assets and how the authorities responsible for those assets should work with them. Its value is the line it…
Posted on 6th March, 2026
 | 

Fowlea Brook flood scheme: what £12.6m has changed in Stoke-on-Trent

The Fowlea Brook flood scheme is a £12.6 million Environment Agency project, completed in February 2026, that has rebuilt the defences along a constrained urban watercourse running through the centre of Stoke-on-Trent. It reduces flood risk to 333 homes and…
Posted on 6th February, 2026
 | 

Soils, Flooding and Resilience | World Soil Day

World Soil Day, observed each year on 5th December, highlights the critical importance of soils to environmental systems that are often taken for granted. Led by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization through the Global Soil Partnership, it focuses global…
Posted on 5th December, 2025
, in SuDS 
 | 

Who Rescues You in a Flood? How England’s Flood Response Actually Works

When floodwater reaches the doorstep, flood rescue in England is carried out by whoever is closest, trained and available — usually the local fire and rescue service, supported by volunteer boat crews, Coastguard teams, the RNLI, mountain and lowland rescue…
Posted on 20th November, 2025
 | 

Shrewsbury Floods, Ironbridge and Bewdley: What 25 Years of Severn Defences Changed

Shrewsbury floods because the town sits inside a loop of the River Severn, on ground the river has always used, at the foot of a catchment that gathers rain across mid Wales. Ironbridge and Bewdley flood for the same reason…
Posted on 5th November, 2025
 | 

York Flooding: Why the Ouse Rises, and What 25 Years of Defences Changed

York flooding is not a freak event. It is the predictable consequence of where the city was built: at the meeting point of two rivers, at the bottom of a catchment draining most of the Yorkshire Dales, on ground flat…
Posted on 5th November, 2025
 | 

Sediment ponds: what the Loughborough study shows

Sediment ponds are small excavated basins, often no bigger than five metres square, that hold back muddy runoff at the edge of a field so the soil it carries settles out before it reaches a ditch or a river. Research…
Posted on 31st October, 2025
, in SuDS 
 | 

Flood Resilience in England: A Wake-Up Call

Flooding in England is no longer a localised hazard — it is a national systems challenge. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s latest report, Flood Resilience in England (HC 550, October 2025), delivers a blunt assessment: the country remains…
Posted on 29th October, 2025
 | 

Integrating Rainwater Harvesting into SuDS Design

Rainwater harvesting in SuDS design sits in an odd position. Collection for non-potable use is Priority 1 in the national discharge hierarchy, ahead of infiltration, a watercourse and any surface water or combined sewer. Yet on most planning applications the…
Posted on 24th October, 2025
, in SuDS 
 | 

Green SuDS: Nature-Based Drainage in Modern Planning

Green SuDS are nature-based drainage features — swales, rain gardens, basins, green roofs and wetlands — that manage rainwater using vegetation and soil rather than buried pipes and tanks. Across England's planning system they have become the preferred form of…
Posted on 22nd October, 2025
, in SuDS 
 | 

Does Tree Planting Reduce Flood Risk? What the UK Evidence Actually Shows

Does tree planting reduce flood risk? Yes, but the size of the effect depends almost entirely on scale, and the honest answer changes depending on how far back you stand. Measure a woodland hillside against the grazed field next to…
Posted on 26th September, 2025
 | 

Floods in a Drought: Why Drought Causes Flooding in the UK

Floods in a drought sound like a contradiction. They are not. When soil has been baked hard for weeks it sheds rain rather than absorbing it, so one summer downpour can put water across roads and through doorways while rivers,…
Posted on 11th September, 2025
 | 

£7.9bn Flood Defence Programme: What the Money Actually Buys

The £7.9 billion flood defence programme is the ten-year capital settlement for flood and coastal erosion risk management in England. It was set at the June 2025 Spending Review, started on 1 April 2026 and runs to March 2036. Over…
Posted on 19th June, 2025
, in NPPF 
 | 

Riparian Ownership: Rights, Responsibilities and Guidance

Riparian ownership means owning land that sits next to, above or contains a watercourse: a river, stream, brook or ditch. Unless your title deeds say otherwise, the law presumes you own the bed and banks of that channel up to…
Posted on 6th June, 2025
, in FRAP 
, in IDB 
, in LLFA 
 | 

What the 2025–30 London Surface Water Strategy Means for Planning

As climate change accelerates and urban environments become denser, cities around the world face mounting challenges in managing water. Nowhere is this truer than in London, where the convergence of ageing infrastructure, rising population pressures, and increasingly erratic weather patterns…
Posted on 22nd May, 2025
, in SuDS 
, in TfL 
 | 

Natural Flood Management: EA Research Deep Dive & Analysis

Natural flood management (NFM) does work, but the honest answer is more useful than a simple yes. The Environment Agency's latest evidence shows that measures which slow, store and filter water across a catchment can measurably lower flood peaks, especially…
Posted on 13th February, 2025
 | 

Natural Flood Management Schemes in the UK: How Real Projects Slow the Flow

Natural flood management schemes use woodland, wetlands, leaky dams and better-managed soils to slow and store rainwater across a catchment, taking the edge off flood peaks downstream. Across the UK, councils, rivers trusts and landowners now run dozens of these…
Posted on 3rd February, 2025
, in NFM 
 | 

What is BRE365 Infiltration Testing (Soakaway Design)?

BRE365 infiltration testing is the in-ground test that measures how fast your site's soil can absorb surface water, so you can prove a soakaway will work and size it correctly. It follows BRE Digest 365, the standard UK method for…
Posted on 2nd December, 2024
, in NPPF 
, in SuDS 
 | 

The Environment Agency (EA): Flood Risk and Planning

The Environment Agency is the government's statutory adviser on flood risk in the English planning system. It does not decide planning applications, but where a site carries flood risk its advice usually shapes whether permission is granted, refused, or held…
Posted on 28th August, 2024
, in NPPF 
 | 

Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs): what they do and why they matter for planning

An internal drainage board, usually shortened to IDB, is an independent public body that manages water levels and land drainage across a defined low-lying area where gravity drainage alone will not do the job. England has 112 of them, covering…
Posted on 27th August, 2024
, in NPPF 
 | 

Beavers and Flood Risk: What Landowners and Developers Need to Know

Beavers and flood risk stopped being a curiosity the moment the law changed. England has had a licensed route to release beavers into the wild since February 2025, three projects are now running, and Natural England is working with around…
Posted on 19th February, 2018
 |