Examination of Witnesses (Questions 680
- 695)
WEDNESDAY 9 JANUARY 2008
MS PAMELA
TAYLOR, MR
PHILL MILLS,
MR BRUCE
HORTON, MR
JIM MARSHALL
AND MR
RICHARD VENTERS
Q680 Miss McIntosh:
How much do you think the right of connectivity for new developments
might have contributed to recent floods? Do you agree with the
Pitt Review that the automatic right of connection should be abolished?
What would you propose to put in its place?
Ms Taylor: Yes, we do agree that
the automatic right of connection should be stopped because if
we want to plan properly then the automatic right to connect to
the public sewer makes planning very difficult, and if we cannot
plan properly then it makes dealing with sewer flooding a real
challenge indeed. We would like to see in future that there would
be no automatic right of connection.
Q681 Miss McIntosh:
Do you think it has contributed historically?
Mr Mills: Yes, we are aware of
incidents, not necessarily last year, of increased surface water
connections or misconnections, where people have connected into
the surface water sewerage system and it has caused flooding locally
downstream. I would emphasise that we are not talking about removing
the right to connect to the foul public sewerage system. It is
only the right to connect surface water to the sewerage system.
We have already been through quite a number of other solutions
for the disposing and treating of surface water and we feel that
the automatic right to the public sewer should not be there, and
developers and planners should consider the sustainable urban
drainage options.
Q682 Miss McIntosh:
How much of a problem is it? You mentioned the age of some of
the sewerage pipes. How much of a problem is it of connecting
new pipes to old pipes in the sense that there might be some surface
water run-off that will eventually cause a flood?
Ms Taylor: It varies but it hardly
ever is not a problem. They are connected, they are misconnected.
Trying to plan within a region, trying to plan within a catchment
and so on, it makes it so difficult—unnecessarily so.
Q683 Dr Strang:
Before I ask a question about the safety of reservoirs and dams,
obviously water utilities are major owners of dams; are you satisfied
that the legislation in place is adequate to ensure that the checks
and controls are such as to protect the public and indeed public
infrastructure from the risk of a dam failure?
Ms Taylor: There is no doubt at
all that the legislation has served us well so far. I think that
now, though, as we were all surprised by what has happened last
year, that people are beginning to say does that legislation need
to be looked at again regarding the regulation of reservoirs in
order to build in some kind of basis for risk assessment. We would
certainly be interested in helping to look at that.
Q684 Dr Strang:
The stakes are very high. There is a potential loss of life.
Mr Venters: I think the legislation
itself under the Reservoirs Act is very broad and thorough, but
I think the suggestion that the scope of the legislation needs
to be broadened is probably a good one. At the moment it only
covers reservoirs which hold more than 25,000 cubic metres above
the natural level of the land and it does not cover all reservoirs.
It certainly does not cover reservoirs associated with mining
and quarrying and the suggestion that perhaps we should move from
a capacity-based measure to a risk-based measure may be something
that needs to be looked at. I think the legislation is probably
fine; it is the scope that needs a second look.
Q685 Dr Strang:
Just one final point, apparently there are a number of old dams
that serve no current economic purpose. Should we be doing more
to get rid of these?
Mr Venters: My comment on that
is if you are a reservoir owner or a reservoir undertaker you
do have to comply with the requirements of the Reservoirs Act.
You have to have various engineers, including a supervising engineer,
to make sure that the reservoir is safe. Every ten years you have
to have an independent engineer come in and inspect and make recommendations,
so if at any time these engineers consider—and they have
to be specialised panel engineers—that the reservoir is
unsafe, they can require the owner to take steps to render it
safe, drain it down, or even take other remedial measures. I think
the legislation is fine; it is a matter of whether it is being
applied as thoroughly as perhaps it should be.
Mr Mills: The legislation is fine
as it stands for those reservoirs above 25,000 cubic metres. There
are a lot of reservoirs smaller than that that are not owned by
the water companies which have processes in place but may be under
private ownership or agricultural ownership that do not have to
meet those criteria but still can pose a big risk if there was
a failure of that dam. The legislation needs to move away from
that numerical basis to a risk-based approach.
Dr Strang: That is very helpful. It occurs
to me that it might be useful if they have any other ideas if
they send us a note on some of these points that we could pursue.
Q686 Chairman:
Just before we conclude I want to go back and ask a point of clarification
about sustainable urban drainage systems. We talk about these
but there seems to be a lack of willingness for anybody to say,
"We will take responsibility for looking after them."
Why is this and who should do it?
Mr Mills: Water UK was part of
a national steering group and we produced an interim code of practice
back in July 2004 because there was a lack of government direction
around sustainable urban drainage systems. The industry put an
addendum out to help developers in what water companies would
take on, but there is still a lot of uncertainty, not least around
the ownership and maintenance and also the funding. Under the
legislation, water companies would not be able to look after SUDS
because they do not come under the definition of a sewer. In Scotland
they got around that by changing all the legislation on sewers
so that SUDS, provided they met the one in 30 design criteria,
could be classified as a sewer. Scottish Water now take on the
SUDS of that size in Scotland. There are other issues about rights
of discharge from SUDS because companies do not have rights of
discharge.
Q687 Chairman:
I am sure you can give lots of problems but I am actually looking
for solutions.
Ms Taylor: It is easy—we
just need to have some kind of statutory backing to the code that
we have developed. That would be fine.
Q688 Paddy Tipping:
Who would be responsible?
Ms Taylor: Water operators would
take responsibility if they have the funding and so on just as
they have done in Scotland.
Q689 Mr Drew:
So it is sewer works?
Ms Taylor: Yes exactly and at
the moment there is some silly thing where this you can call a
sewer, that you cannot, and we just need to get over this nonsense.
Q690 Chairman:
You said if they have the funding. You were bewailing the fact
that you were going to have to take over some private sewers and
there is a funding implication. Here we are talking about various
systems for absorbing water and the question is, yes, okay, we
change the law, we fix it, it is your responsibility, but does
that mean that the cost then is simply spread over the companies'
water users?
Ms Taylor: Yes. And it would then
be part of the price review process with the case being made to
the economic regulator and so on.
Mr Horton: It would not necessarily
always be the water company who is the responsible party. Just
clarifying the legislation would help to identify who that was.
It may be the local authority in many circumstances, depending
on the type of SUDS and the location.
Q691 Paddy Tipping:
That does not seem to clarify things; that seems to confuse things.
Surely one body needs to be in charge? Just help me through this.
You have made great play throughout the afternoon about SUDS and
how it was the way forward to be water neutral—was that
the phrase that you used—but presumably on a new development
the developer would have to talk to you and the local authority
about the design and then if the legislation changed you would
be responsible. Why would the local authority be responsible?
Mr Mills: I think you have to
be careful about what we mean by SUDS.
Ms Taylor: The kind of SUDS that
you are describing is the kind of SUDS that we are talking about
as well, and certainly we would expect to take responsibility
if we were given the right circumstances to be able to do so,
but there are some SUDS that we would not recognise as a SUDS,
that we would recognise as a community facility for sailing and
goodness knows what else and balancing lakes and all the rest
of it. It is a question of what we are calling a SUDS. Bruce is
quite right in pointing out that we would not necessarily in every
circumstances be talking about all SUDS, but certainly the kind
of thing that you are describing is the kind of thing that we
would expect.
Q692 Chairman:
What would be very helpful to the Committee—and I appreciate
you have probably got a library full of information—is if
you could précis for us SUDS, what they do and who is responsible.
That would be helpful because when we went to Lyon what we saw
was balancing pools and it looked to me like a lake but I was
told it was a SUDS. It was part of a very substantial piece of
urban redevelopment where the system was an integral part of the
development and I think it was the developer who had the requirement
to maintain it. Ultimately, if you have got a body of water it
has got to go somewhere, which at that point it might well become
a water company's responsibility, so if you could give us a succinct
layman's guide to SUDS and who should pay, that would be extremely
helpful.
Ms Taylor: We would be delighted
to and if I may just add one comment on SUDS and balancing lakes
and so on—and you must not laugh at this—if you wanted
to visit Milton Keynes you would there find where there was perfect
planning in consultation with the water company. Because it was
a new town it meant that all the existing planning rules were,
if you like, bypassed in favour of partnership planning and partnership
working. There you have got a very fine example of building a
city that has not put additional strain on the river resources,
flooding and so on. It is a very good example if you wanted to
visit it.
Q693 Paddy Tipping:
The new eco towns that are all the rage that we are all looking
for; are they going to have SUDS?
Ms Taylor: They are going to have
to.
Q694 Paddy Tipping:
Have you been consulted on that?
Mr Mills: I think some companies
will have been consulted on that but sustainable urban drainage
systems are properly a requirement of the planning application
or the planning conditions, and the issue is who is then responsible
for their long-term maintenance.
Ms Taylor: When you are building
a new town you just say let us do this together, let us work in
partnership. There were different rules there when you had development
corporations and so on that you do not necessarily have in existing
places. The reason why I raise this is because it shows it can
be done and there is no excuse not to do it.
Q695 Paddy Tipping:
They are managed by Anglian Water.
Ms Taylor: Yes they are.
Mr Mills: One final point—one
of the key dangers, you said about the developer still maintaining
that particular SUDS installation, if that developer should then
go bust or decide he has had enough, he could just pipe that SUDS
straight into the surface water or a combined sewerage system
which would cause overloading and flooding downstream. That is
why we need to look at the right of connection and remove that
automatic right.
Chairman: You have made my railway trips
through Milton Keynes of even greater significance as I gaze from
my window at the plastic cows and the obvious sustainable fuel
and water that they have. It is a very interesting comment that
you made. Thank you very much indeed for your evidence and for
your written evidence; it is much appreciated.
| 
