What is Surface Water Drainage?

Surface water flooding occurs where high rainfall events exceed the drainage capacity in an area. Such events can also lead to serious flooding of property and possessions where surface water flows and collects.

What are we doing?

As part of the Government's response to the Pitt Review, Ministers announced investment of £15 million to help local authorities co-ordinate and lead local flood management work. As an immediate step, six local authorities were funded to develop first edition surface water management plans (SWMPs), the results of which have fed into the updated SWMP Technical Guidance Document. The final reports from these six local authorities are now available on the Defra website.

On 18th August 2009 Ministers announced how the £15 million would be allocated to local authorities and the list of 77 local authorities who would be awarded grants (PDF 14KB) to develop SWMPs in the areas considered to be at highest risk. Defra have written to the local authorities concerned with more details. Details of the methodology (PDF 296KB) used for the allocation and a list of all settlements in England in rank order (PDF 2.2MB) by risk are available to view online. Local authorities with strong evidence that suggests the methodology may have underestimated the risk in their area were invited to notify Defra by October 30th 2009 to have their individual case reconsidered.

See the rest of the article on the following link:-Defra.gov.uk