Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We welcome to the Committee Mr Alistair Beggs, director for the transformation planning bid; Simon Richardson, director of sustainable drainage; and Stuart Wightman, programme manager in the sustainable drainage directorate. You are very welcome to the Committee today. We appreciate your time, because transformation is really important and we all see things moving forward, particularly in some of the areas where money has been allocated.

Are members content that the evidence is recorded by Hansard?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We have some information from you, but, if you do not mind, you can make some brief remarks for five minutes, and then I will come to members' questions.

Mr Alistair Beggs (Department for Infrastructure): Thank you, Chair and Committee members, for inviting us along to discuss the Department's two public-sector transformation projects. As you will be aware from the briefing, all this stems from part of the financial package to restore the Executive. As part of that, in May 2024, the UK Government committed to provide £235 million in ring-fenced funding for the purpose of transformation. After that, the Executive established an interim public-sector transformation board, and a first call for transformation proposals was issued to Departments on 31 May 2024. In March 2025, we were delighted that the Department had been successful in securing funding for two of its transformation proposals: the transforming planning bid in relation to independent inspectors; and transforming urban drainage through nature-based solutions. I will give you a very brief overview of the planning project before I hand over to Simon, who will cover the urban drainage project.

The written briefing pretty much sets out the current situation with the planning transformation project, but I will make a couple of brief points. The project arose as a result of the concerns that the Department and other stakeholders throughout the planning system had about resource issues in the Planning Appeals Commission (PAC), which were causing delays in the progress of important public local inquiries and hearings, and potential delays in future independent examinations of council local development plans. That was affecting confidence in the planning system as a whole amongst the public and investors in the country. Within the lifetime of the project, the funding will allow us to use for the first time our powers to appoint independent inspectors to undertake work with the aim of providing an alternative route to progress what we call "hear and report" work immediately. It will restore faith in that particular part of the planning system by speeding up the processes in relation to "hear and report" work. It will improve certainty and clarity, and it will reduce the inherent waste that comes with delay as things sit not being progressed.

We also hope that our taking on that work will allow the Planning Appeals Commission to concentrate on its own appeal work, which we term "hear and decide" work. That will, hopefully, facilitate its looking at how to improve figures in relation to that critical part of the planning system as well. As part of the project, we really want to look at the use of AI where we possibly can and the use of technology to promote engagement with the planning process and speed up delivery. It is very important that we get buy-in to that particular project.

We have just set up the core team to take things forward. Things are really starting to speed up as we brainstorm and put things together. We are looking at preparing the detailed project plans at the moment and getting all the business cases ready for that. Within the next six months to nine months, we will be looking at getting all the governance and processes in place to allow independent inspectors to start work.

Mr Simon Richardson (Department for Infrastructure): Thank you very much. I will give you a short introduction to the pilot project on urban drainage, and then we will take some questions.

The Committee will have received numerous briefings on the pressure on our sewerage networks and waste water treatment works and the significant levels of investment that are needed. The living with water in Belfast plan identified over £1·9 billion of infrastructure that is needed in the greater Belfast area alone. However, the Belfast plan also identified the need to complement hard-engineered upgrades with softer nature-based solutions. Traditionally, rainwater in towns and cities is carried away by underground pipes to nearby rivers, but, in the vast majority of cases, it is transferred to combined sewers, where it is mixed with sewage, which results in it having to be pumped and chemically treated at waste water treatment works. During periods of intense rain, those pipes become overwhelmed and discharge via overflows into rivers, causing environmental damage, which you will all have heard about. When the capacity of those sewers is exceeded, it can also be a source of flooding to roads, houses and businesses. Slowing and reducing the flow of rainwater into the drainage system will help to reduce flood risk, improve water quality by reducing spills from combined sewers and, hopefully, provide a cost saving to NI Water through reduced energy costs for pumping and treatment.

The urban drainage project proposal is to develop and deliver a £15 million pilot project over the next four years to store and slow the flow of rainwater through urban areas using nature-based solutions. The proposal is based on the UK's largest sustainable drainage scheme in Mansfield, where Severn Trent Water, which is the water company for the area, is investing £76 million to deliver over 30,000 cubic metres of rainwater storage. We have provided you with some pictures from Mansfield and Sheffield, which we visited recently, where nature-based drainage features such as rain gardens, swales and detention basins have been successfully retrofitted into the urban environment.

In a similar way to Mansfield, we propose to retrofit around 10,000 cubic metres of rainwater storage through a range of those nature-based drainage solutions. NI Water will be our lead delivery partner, and we will be supported by DFI Rivers and DFI Roads. When we have identified where the potential interventions will be located, we will liaise with the relevant council and landowners to develop the most appropriate nature-based solutions for the location and the surrounding area.

As I said, the aim is to demonstrate the benefit of managing rainwater naturally in the surface to reduce and slow its flow into rivers and pipe drainage systems. Nature-based solutions also have the potential to help our towns and cities to adapt to the increased rainfall, flooding and heatwaves that are likely to be experienced as part of climate change. The lessons learned from that pilot project will help inform the roll-out of a wider sustainable drainage and natural flood management project.

The focus of my team over the next six to nine months will be to formally establish this pilot project, identify potential schemes, secure the necessary approvals and commence delivery in early 2026. We will then set out a programme of work over the next three years to help demonstrate the benefits of managing rainwater more naturally on the surface. That is a quick intro. We are happy to take questions, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Thank you very much. Alistair, we know that you were chief planner and have moved on from that role, but thank you for your work during that time. In your current role, you will have some vested interest after coming from the chief planning end.

The main thing is the key milestones and the achievements. How will that be measured to ensure that we have accountability that the money that we have received will make the difference when it comes to transformation?

Mr Beggs: That is a very good question, Chair. We are looking at that in a number of ways. Independent experts will help us establish the project. One of those people is the chief reporter in Scotland. He has said that he is willing to help us there, so we will get his knowledge and experience. They are doing a number of interesting things. The chief executive of the Office of the Planning Regulator down South has also agreed to be a critical friend to us in that regard, to take it forward. They will be questioning us at all stages and contributing to what we are taking forward.

We will also be answerable to the interim public-sector transformation board. We will engage with that board. We have already had discussions on key performance indicators to help us with that project so that we get that established at the end. The project lends itself to quite high-level indicators, but we see getting the correct protocols and guidance in place as being critical to making sure that, when the inspectors start work, we get quality independent reports. If we do not do that, this will not work at all. We think that we can do that. That is what we will be starting with. With a detailed project plan in place, we are now starting to get a very good handle on what we need to do and in what order. We will spend the next six to nine months getting that absolutely right and proofed before we go out. I hope that I have answered the question, but if there is anything that you want —.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): The key indicators will be important, even for the Committee to scrutinise and make sure that the money has been spent effectively. Will those key indicators be publicly available so that we can measure their success? I am hoping for success, not failure, and I am sure that you are as well. Will those be publicly available and measured? Do we have the resource to do that?

Mr Beggs: I would very much like those to be publicly available. I think that as much as possible should be publicly available so that people have confidence in what we are doing. They could be quite high level. For example, when we pull the trigger to set off a public local inquiry, we could set a target for getting that up and running within a certain number of months and set targets for the reporters to come back to us. The really important indicator will be that, when this work comes and is ready to be moved on, it moves into that system immediately, because that is the problem that we faced in the past, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Sorry, Simon. Do you want to —?

Mr Richardson: Same question to me?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Yes,

Mr Richardson: In relation to the drainage projects, I gave you a figure of 10,000 cubic metres. We want to provide that quantity of storage through a series of interventions. We also want to break it down into the different types of interventions, and you will see that in some of the photographs. Some of the larger projects — the detention basins — provide an opportunity to get those volumes. The more volume that we can store and infiltrate, the better. In some circumstances, we can store the water, and we have to return it to the sewerage system at a slower pace, but if we can store it in the right location it might, depending on ground conditions, infiltrate into the ground and not go back into the system. We need to test and monitor the range of different interventions that we have to show what will give us the best value and the best outcome. There will not only be the high-level target of 10,000 cubic metres. We will also be looking at the different interventions to see what the main benefits of those interventions are and have a "lessons learned" document from that, which we can feed through to our delivery partners — Roads, Rivers, NI Water — as to where those interventions should be used and where we get best value from them. So there is a high-level target of 10,000 cubic metres, but we also have to learn about the range that we have available to us and what works well in Belfast.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I do not want to diminish the fact that you have received money; there is no doubt that it is very welcome. In relation to the urban drainage side of things, we will have the water, flooding and sustainable drainage Bill, which will be coming to the Committee. How much of the work that you are doing will feed into that piece of legislation? Are we funding something that is easy for the Department to fund because it will help in relation to that piece of legislation? Do you know what I am trying to say there?

Mr Richardson: Yes. That legislation will give us the powers to develop policy for sustainable drainage in private developments. The pilot project that we are talking about will retrofit the existing infrastructure. It is looking at situations in which pipes could be overwhelmed. Where we have green space available, we can intercept those pipes, take the water to a detention pond, infiltrate it and bring it back in at a slower pace. That is what the pilot project will focus on. We will probably focus on locations that are owned by us or by councils or the Housing Executive — partners that we have worked with before. The legislation that you are talking about will allow us to do that as part of the overall way in which we manage urban drainage. There is no point in retrofitting existing systems if we allow new systems to continue to be built in the old way. The legislation will be very beneficial to me and my team, when we look at how to develop a policy for sustainable drainage for new developments. That will mean that drainage can be designed properly, using nature-based solutions rather than grey concrete pipes and tanks, and approved through the planning system so that the systems that are proposed by developers will work. That way, we will all be satisfied that they are taking forward best practice.

The pilot scheme, by moving quickly at pace and delivering some of these interventions on the ground, will help developers to come and look at what we are doing. The findings that we get from the pilot will feed into the development of future policy and the way that we shape new developments. The pilot is really helpful in getting interventions on the ground so that we do not have to go to Mansfield to look at them. We can look at them in Belfast and see their benefit.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Obviously, I know that urban drainage is the key for this particular project, but what was the rationale for choosing the two catchment areas in Belfast of Fortwilliam and Whitehouse? Could areas outside Belfast have been chosen? We have urban centres outside Belfast as well.

Mr Richardson: Yes. When we were considering the pilot, we thought that the main beneficiary would be NI Water, because, if we were to reduce or slow the flow of water into the combined sewers, there would be fewer spills and less treatment at waste water treatment works. As NI Water is the beneficiary, we have been working with it to develop the pilot. In doing so, we decided that we might as well pick catchment areas in which NI Water is working and having problems, so that we can try to address some of those problems with the pilot.

Whitehouse and Fortwilliam are two catchments areas on which we worked in the living with water programme. We have identified some of the problems that NI Water is having in those areas. We want to see whether the pilot can assist NI Water in its work. We felt that the collaboration would be better if we worked in an areas in which NI Water was having difficulties to see whether the pilot could assist with resolving them. That is why we picked those areas.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. I will not take up much more of the time; I hand over to the Deputy Chair.

Mr Stewart: Thanks for coming along, gentlemen, and for your answers so far. The Chair covered some of the high-level issues. I assume that you looked at other areas and that there was a wealth of others to pick from. If the pilot is successful, is there, therefore, a pile of other areas — low-hanging fruit — in which you could proceed with the project?

Mr Richardson: Yes, we could have looked at lots of places. Although we are concentrating on the two chosen catchment areas because we want to work collaboratively with NI Water, if we find low-hanging fruit through some of the other work that we have done, and an opportunity becomes available where we can easily do something outside the two catchment areas, we will look at that. Building the pilot, demonstrating it and being able to monitor it may help us to deliver in other areas. We are not excluding the possibility of moving elsewhere, but the focus of the pilot initially will be on Whitehouse and Fortwilliam.

Mr Stuart Wightman (Department for Infrastructure): It is worth saying that there are some unique issues with Whitehouse. There is a shellfish bed in the lough, which is in the vicinity of the outfall from the treatment works; the treatment works are overwhelmed; and there are issues with the sewerage network. You have probably seen the 'Spotlight' programme: there are issues with too much water getting into and coming out of the system. There are opportunities, if you go up into the hills, to do stuff to hold the water back. There is a nice opportunity in that area, because there are a number of issues there. For that reason, it came out as a top priority.

Mr Stewart: It is about getting bang for your buck in that respect.

Although the Chair touched on this — maybe I was not able to understand the answer — I will try my own question. Has anyone been able to formulate, quantify or write down how to calculate the invest-to-save model between doing schemes such as this one and taking the cost burden of processing that rainwater away from NI Water. For example, if we spend £100,000 to take rainwater out of the system by putting in lovely flower beds — I am not being facetious; that is just an example — has anyone been able to say how much spend on electricity that will save in the pumping stations over five years? Has anyone been able to do that, or is this about testing that over a period of time?

Mr Richardson: It is about testing it over a period of time. Mansfield is a prime example. They took a no-regrets approach there. They did not go in and monitor or analyse it to death at the start, but they knew, from their engineering judgement, that if you intercept a pipe and take it off, the water will not get into the system. They were probably in a better position in Mansfield because of the ground conditions there. A lot of the water is infiltrated into the ground and will never go back into the combined sewer network, which is the best outcome. They decided, "Let's go and build it. We know that it will have a benefit and, once it is in place, we will monitor it". A lot of the work for us in the pilot scheme will involve identifying the correct areas and putting the measures in place and monitoring what they do and their benefits.

In answer to your question, we hope that we will be able to summarise the benefits at the end of the pilot. We are not trying to analyse it to death at the start to make sure that we pick the exact right spot, because we could spend four years doing that. Overanalysing is very frustrating. Through our engineering judgement, we know that if we pick the right place there will be a benefit. That is the approach. It is a no-regrets approach, although we will, or course, learn lessons from what we do.

Mr Stewart: I will not lie, gents: the photographs of the Mansfield project look amazing. I am sure that there is no direct overlap with the schemes that you are going to do, but I thought, "Oh my goodness, if we had those measures here my inbox would go nuts after a year of the rainwater going through them", because nobody would be able to cut them, given the pressures on cutting grass right now.

Mr McReynolds: You have triggered Keith.

Mr Stewart: I do not want to open that can of worms. The projects look fantastic, though. Maybe the key is to have community engagement in order to get buy-in from councils and ensure that we do not have six-foot-high flower beds that are totally out of control.

Mr Richardson: Without skipping over that —.

Mr Stewart: It is an important issue.

Mr Richardson: It is, absolutely. Maintenance is an issue. If you are asking me, "Who is going to maintain all these?", I do not have the answer for you.

Mr Stewart: That is the key question.

Mr Richardson: It depends where the intervention is. If it is on council land, we may consider sitting down with the council to discuss grass cutting. NI Water might have to take the outlet pipe. Again, if we got all the players in a room and started to thrash that out, it would be a long, hard conversation. I know that, because I have tried to do it. We take this no-regrets approach. We know that it is the right thing to do. Let us build it, demonstrate the benefits and then sit down sensibly and decide who is best-placed to maintain it. Some of those detention ponds, which are just grassed, require minimal maintenance. They provide the best bang for your buck, because they hold bigger quantities. Some of the smaller rain gardens need more maintenance, although the Mansfield and Sheffield authorities feel that one maintenance intervention per year, if done properly, can be enough. Again, we are learning from that.

Mr Stewart: The key words are "done properly". For example, the grass verges and sight lines in Carrickfergus look like my eight-year-old cut them with his Fisher-Price lawnmower. That is the problem. We have to ensure that it is done properly and that there is a budget and agreement in place. I know that you get that, but the issue is whether others get it and whether we can get buy-in from the councils, NI Water and everybody to ensure that it is done properly. That is my big concern. I am not against the idea — I think that it is great — it is just about getting our ducks in line. [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We can laugh but it is a serious point.

Mr Stewart: It really is.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): You said that you have had to have the key players in the room, which is difficult to do. That is something that we need to take on board as a Committee. I do not want to say that it will be a waste of money if that cannot be done, but it is the hereafter that matters. If you want the project to work, it is the hereafter that matters

Mr Richardson: Absolutely.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Andrew, sorry.

Mr McMurray: Mr Stewart gets the emails about cutting the grass and, when the grass gets cut, I get the emails saying, "What did you cut the grass for?".

Mr Stewart: I am for maintaining sight lines, Andrew. Health and safety come first. We always say "Safety first" in this Committee.

Mr Boylan: The environmentalists are in the room.

Mr Stewart: Safety first.

Mr McMurray: It is great to see this. To come back to the main point, when will the pilots become the standard? It is great to see the pilots going ahead, but Newcastle and Downpatrick both had flooding that was attributed to their surface-water drainage systems. While it is great to see the pilots, there is a desire to see them in our area. When do you envisage that the work of the pilots becoming the standard? What retrofits will be available in areas that have experienced flooding that was attributed to surface drainage?

Mr Richardson: We have to accept that this is the first step in a long process. We have had to go to Mansfield to look at these types of interventions because there are none here apart from a few along the Connswater greenway. That is why the pilots are so important: they will demonstrate that an intervention at a certain location has made a difference. I am not going to oversell this or say that this type of intervention would have been of any benefit during the flooding events in Downpatrick and Newry.

We are trying to change the way in which we and other infrastructure providers look at surface water. Do we always try to get it off the surface as quickly as possible, put it into a concrete pipe and get it away? The only place to get it away to is either a river, which is not always possible, or a waste water treatment works. We are trying to change how we place-manage our urban environment. We are trying to get the water not to go into pipes, or get less of it going into pipes, and allow it to infiltrate. This is the first step in a very long process.

I refer back to the issue of new developments. In 20 years' time, we do not want to have to retrofit new developments that are being built now. We want them to consider the whole rainwater process, including where it falls, and deal with it at source.

The first attempt should not be to put it into a pipe; we should try to deal with it through natural solutions.

In answer to your question about when it will come to Newry or Downpatrick, it probably will not do so through this pilot. If something becomes available that, as I said earlier, is an exception — really low-hanging fruit — and we can go and demonstrate something, I will certainly look at it, but this is about changing approaches. The other way of solving this is to dig up all the roads and put bigger pipes in. Nobody wants to do that, from both an engineering and a traffic congestion point of view. This is a first step in trying to change attitudes to how we deal with rainwater, and the fact that somewhere floods, we know that it is going to flood, and we designed it so that that place floods, is not a bad thing, because it means that a house is not flooded and sewage does not come out of the network. I am trying to bring some reality to what we are trying to do. This is a first step in trying to change our approach to how we deal with surface water, and it will be a long process.

Mr Wightman: Simon mentioned the £1·9 billion that is needed for the hard infrastructure in Belfast. That is still needed. This is alongside that, so let us not kid ourselves. It is not a silver bullet. It is not going to solve all your problems. It is about a change of approach.

One of the challenges that Northern Ireland Water has is that, when you have a spill come out of the sewer or an out-of-sewer flooding incident, the traditional approach is to put a big concrete tank in the ground, which costs millions. That is dealing with the symptoms of the problem. The problem is that there is too much water getting into the system, but, although that is the tried-and-tested method, this pilot will hopefully help demonstrate to Northern Ireland Water and its regulators that there are other ways of doing this. There are over 200 non-compliant CSOs in Belfast alone. As Simon says, it is the start of a process.

Mr Boylan: You are welcome, gentlemen. All that I can say is good luck with the planning stuff, and keep us posted. My experience of planning —. It is welcome. It is a start for us, and we have to move somewhere with it, so good luck with that, and, Alistair, keep us posted.

Simon, it is an interesting subject, to be fair. It is a good idea and a good pilot, because you have an issue where, no matter how we try to manage our storm drains, sewers or a mixture of both, we have serious challenges. I welcome the new legislation so that, going forward, anything that is being built should be built to cater for dealing with storm water on its own. We have a problem with what you are trying to deal with now. We have an issue that we are going to look at these things for the next 20 years and try to deal with them, and there is more and more flooding. This is a fairly reasonable challenge for us, but it is a fairly reasonable thing to do. I was looking at the pictures there. I take John's point about cutting grass and all that, but you are talking about surface water. We have seen the damage that has been done in this last wee while, so I think that it is a good thing.

This is my main question. Clearly, all the evidence up to now is out there. You work with NIW. You know the flooding spots are, because you have done a flooding map and all those things. The stuff that you are doing now —. You picked this out for this pilot. Roughly, do you have an idea of how many of these sites there are in Belfast and right across the North where this type of solution may be needed, or do you not? Are you just trying this out as a pilot?

Mr Richardson: This is just being tried out as a pilot, and we are trying to maximise what we can do with the money that is available to us. We are looking at other sources, including shared all-island funding, to see if we can get more money through that. Within the Department, we will look at the budget that is available and see if we can add to it. We have not quantified the potential across all areas at all, but we can do that in the pilot project. Some of the things that we are expecting to find in the pilot project when we go to put a swale or a detention basin in a certain area of services, ground conditions — all those things that are barriers to what we want to do. It is about learning from that and seeing if services —. The need to move services could scupper an intervention. We could get into an intervention and quickly find that it is not viable and have to move somewhere else, and I think that that will happen with this pilot. We will do a desktop study and say, "There are green spaces here, here and here", and, when we get into it, some of them will be able to go green and, with others, we will not be able to do that because there will be some other barriers that will stop us. We have not expanded that out across all areas.

Mr Boylan: No, 100%. We are being reactionary here, because we established what the issue is in those two areas. It has come to the same. You are right: it will never be the case that one size will fit all, because there is the flooding issue over in Newry and things are different right across. My main point is that we are gathering the evidence now to try to come up with some solutions. The more we do that, the more we will learn. I think that it is a good idea to look into this, and that is what we should do. It will learn us, when we go to do this legislation, that for any newbuilds or anything, these things should be in place right across the board, rather than deciding then. They should be across the board. I have been up here for a number of years, and it seems to be getting worse all the time. There is nothing that we can do with stuff that is already built, and we have to react to flooding situations and surface water. That one coming off the mountain — you have surface water, plus water coming off the mountain. It doubles up. In the past couple of years, there has been sewage on the streets and everything else, which has created major problems. It is good, and it will be interesting to see. Has there been any feedback from the Mansfield one?

Mr Richardson: Yes, there has. The main feedback is that some of the smaller interventions provide a lesser benefit. It is the bigger detention basins and swales that provide you with the greatest benefit and are actually easier to build and maintain. We have learned from Mansfield that we should say, "Look, in the early stages, we are going to concentrate on the low-hanging fruit and the bigger interventions in green spaces, because that is where the benefit is". The rain gardens, as we call them, on the side of roads have a smaller benefit. There may well be locations where they are a better solution, but it will not give us our 10,000 cubic metres; it is our bigger interventions that will give us that. From Mansfield, we learned that our first port of call, if you like, will be to look for those bigger interventions off-road and in green spaces that are adjacent to housing developments and roads.

Mr Boylan: I have a wee add-on question.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Very quickly.

Mr Boylan: If you go to America, you see manholes into the curb. The run-off goes into the curb. We have a lot of manhole covers here. No matter what street you drive down, there is one in the middle of the road. There is no choice, because that is where the system runs. Are we looking at trying to put manholes at the curb when we do new stuff in the future? That seems to be logical.

Mr Wightman: There are some examples in Mansfield. There are drainage curbs that feed some of the features. There is a rain garden outside a shop, and you might not appreciate it when you look at it, but it is quite deep. It is about three or four feet or a metre deep. There is material — clean stone — goes in, so that is another metre. It has to be quite deep, because it catches the —. In any new development, it is all about dealing with stuff at source. Ideally, we would not need gullies. In Sheffield, some of the places do not have gullies, because the water runs straight off the road and into the rain garden. That is the idea about dealing with it at the source. That is where we want to get to.

Mr K Buchanan: Thanks, gentlemen, for coming along. I have a couple of questions. Let us wind the clock back. When did we in Northern Ireland split the combined systems in housing estates and developments? When did we go from combined systems to split systems? How long ago, roughly, are we talking?

Mr Wightman: The 1970s.

Mr K Buchanan: The 1970s. So anything built after the '70s has a storm outlet and a foul outlet. If I go to build 100 houses today, do I have to put an attenuation into my storm connection, or do I have to hold that water, from a planning point of view? When did that come in?

Mr Wightman: It depends. If you are connecting and there is a watercourse or river nearby, you apply through the Drainage (Northern Ireland) Order 1973 to our Rivers colleagues to get a schedule 6 approval. That is about greenfield run-off, and you would have to provide some sort of attenuation. If you are going into the sewer, you tend to find that, when you come to the curtilage of the development, it is a combined sewer and that there is no water pipe. That means that a lot of these separated developments that go into the combined system. That is what we are focusing on.

Mr K Buchanan: Theoretically, then, you join on the way out, because there is nowhere to go.

Mr Richardson: You are picking up on our exact point. We are looking at those sites from the 1970s that are already separated.

Mr K Buchanan: But joined at the boundary?

Mr Richardson: They are joined at the boundary. If we can pick that up at the right point and take it away to a detention basin, some of that water will infiltrate. Some of the time we have to bring it back again, but we can bring it back at a slower rate. Sorry, I jumped in there. Apologies for that.

Mr K Buchanan: You are OK. I have a few other wee points. In this example over in Mansfield, £76 million was spent on 30,000 cubic metres. You are going to spend a fifth of that to get a third of it. How are you doing that?

Mr Richardson: I knew that you were going to pick up on that too.

Mr Boylan: Excellent. Value for money.

Mr Richardson: When we first made our bid, Severn Trent Water initially indicated that it was going to spend £76 million and attenuate nearly 50,000 cubic metres, so we made our estimations based on that. It did not deliver what it thought it was going to deliver, because it found that permeable paving, which was one of the features that it was going to look at, was overly expensive and did not provide what it needed. It found that out quite early on. Therefore, quite recently, in the last six months, Severn Trent Water changed from 50,000 cubic metres to 30,000. We were quite ambitious with our 10,000. In answer to your question, I am hoping that we will find some larger-scale interventions and that those will get us close to 10,000 cubic metres. You are right: I cannot lose sight of the fact that we need to deliver a range of interventions. This is a pilot scheme; we need to learn from it.

Mr K Buchanan: Are you planning to do a little bit of everything to learn from it?

Mr Richardson: Yes.

Mr K Buchanan: It is not that it is necessarily the best. I do not mean that to sound rude; I have no issue with it. If you do a square metre in a town and you have a 25-millimetre rain event, you will need 40 of those to be one metre. You are going to do a few of those to learn. "Well, that is a good idea, but that is not a good idea". If you were doing it on the basis of your money, Simon, you would just build one of those basins.

Mr Richardson: If I am going to be —.

Mr K Buchanan: Watch you do not fall into the Reservoirs Act; do not go too far.

Mr Boylan: Do not go above 10,000. You will need a manager and everything else out of that.

Mr Richardson: You are exactly right. I do not want to be blinded by the 10,000 cubic metres. The 10,000 cubic metres is an objective that I put forward, and I will try to attain that. I do not want to lose sight —. I need to test a range of interventions and see where they benefit.

Mr K Buchanan: This is the range?

Mr Richardson: That is the range of features that is available. You are right to pick up on the £76 million down to 30,000 cubic metres and £15 million down to 10,000 cubic metres. As I said, we will try to see whether we can get Shared Island funding, and also the Department if we feel we can add some additional funding to it.

Mr K Buchanan: I have one quick question for Alistair. What happens when the £3 million runs out?

Mr Beggs: We hope, at that point, to have all the processes in place so that those can be re-engaged if and when required. Towards the end of the project, we will ask, "Do we keep it going? If so, where can we obtain funding?" That has to be considered. It is a very important question. We will already have everything in place to kick-start the project or to facilitate taking the work forward again.

The project has two phases. The initial phase is about getting absolutely everything in place and being ready to get the inspectors up and running, and then the inspectors will be working for some years. This goes back to the Chair's point. To make sure that it is working, we need to look at the quality of the reports, what people have said about it and what their experience has been. We will be constantly refining it so that, by the end of the period, we will hopefully have something that is very robust, and we can kick on. At that point, yes, we will have to have a think.

Mr K Buchanan: I have one final question, if I may. Alistair, if you were going to talk to Mr and Mrs Joe Public in the street, how would you explain in one paragraph what the benefit of this £3 million is, what it will do and how you are going to evaluate it, which you touched on? I just do not get what this is going to do. Maybe I am just stupid. Explain to me what this £3 million is going to do and what the benefit is for the planning system. Explain that to me in layman's or laywoman's terms, please.

Mr Beggs: Only one paragraph. [Laughter.]

Mr Boylan: Four lines. A limerick.

Mr Beggs: OK. What we have are major planning applications. There is millions of pounds worth of investment going through the planning system. What goes through the "hear and report" system is some of the biggest stuff that we have, and it has the potential to impact on our environment, job creation, rates creation and things like that. They have been held up for years because of a resource issue. We need to be able to move that on because, if we do not, what is acceptable is not getting on the ground and creating new jobs and investment. You often find that the concern of a layperson in the street is about what the actual impact is upon them. People get, quite rightly, very involved with the environmental aspects of these developments as well. If you are sitting for years waiting to find out the result of a planning application, that can affect your life and how you go about it. That is very concerning, so the whole idea is that, if we get this in, we are speeding it up and you will get the conclusion that you need, whether that is protection of the environment or the creation of jobs for the country and the investment that we need. If that system is working fast and well, that encourages investor confidence in Northern Ireland. That is one of the big messages that we have had from all around. People are honestly questioning whether Northern Ireland is a place to come and do business in, because they perceive the planning system as slower than in other places. This is one of the areas where we are held up. This is a very focused intervention on that end of the process.

Mr K Buchanan: Thank you for that. That was two and a half paragraphs, but that is OK.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): The way I see it is that your remit, Alistair, is resource and yours, Simon, is capital. Those are the two areas where the investment is going. I suppose that there is overlap with both of those with planning and with drainage, particularly when you look at big projects. Alistair, if you do not mind, I will ask you a few more questions. The Committee had with us the Interim Regional Planning Commission, and one of the things that came out from that meeting was the importance of stakeholder engagement and who the commission was engaging with. Is that going to be a big part of your remit and work as well through the people who you are speaking to — surveyors, construction, renewables and all of that side of things? Can you just touch on the stakeholder engagement that you will have?

Mr Beggs: That is a fundamental part of this, because it is a system that needs buy-in to have confidence. What we are focusing on is that we will have delivery partners. For example, we have approached the Royal Town Planning Institute, which is the biggest professional planning body in the North. It represents the whole range of private-sector and public-sector planners, so it is an important resource to have. It can reach out, so we will be involving it and we will be discussing, perhaps, how to engage appropriately with other stakeholder groups — renewables and so on. The councils are also massive stakeholders in this. They are probably the prime users of "hear and report" work through, for example, local development plans. We have briefed the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) in writing very briefly, and we will be engaging with it. If it wants to speak to us about something, we will certainly be there and advise on where we are. Again, we want to engage well with it. We are very aware that we need a communications plan as part of this project so that we are reaching out to the right people. We will be engaging with Community Places, which represents the general public, who sometimes find it difficult to engage with the planning system. We feel that they have a useful perspective on how to get people involved in this. Getting more openness and more engagement on that is quite critical. We do want to go out, and we see those as core areas that can reach out to other areas as and when we require them. It is a very important aspect.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): You rightly touched on the fact that investors are turning away from Northern Ireland. We hear that, and we see that. Getting that shift turned around, particularly in planning, will be very difficult. Keith also touched on this. Are you confident that the resource that you have as part of that £3 million is going to start that shift? An awful lot of things have come up in the Committee. We have had review after review after review on planning, and, to be honest, people are sick, sore and tired of planning reviews. They just want a bit of action on it. Can you confidently say that, by the end of the process, the difference will definitely be there?

Mr Beggs: Yes, I believe that we should have shifted the dial, Chair. We will have an alternative route that we did not have before. We have a resource in place that we can enact. You are perfectly right: we need a result on the ground. That will start to come when the inspectors make decisions and we see the fruit of what they produce. In time, that is what will really shift opinion. Yes, the planning of the project is great — that is fine — but we need the outcome. It is critical that we can be certain that we are providing quality, but this is a shift in the dial that does do that. Hopefully, it will provide a bit of loosening up to allow other parts of the planning system to look at improving their system. Through this very focused change, we hope that that will be a little spread out.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): You talked about councils and said that you have briefed SOLACE in writing. You said — I am paraphrasing, so correct me if I have taken you up wrongly — that you will be there for councils to engage with you. Should there not be, say, a monthly, bimonthly or weekly engagement happening with the councils, given that they are such a massive stakeholder, even to pick up on emerging issues that crop up?

Mr Beggs: That is one of the important things that we need to look at in the communications plan, Chair. We also engage with the heads of planning every two months. That is an important facility to use to brief them on where they are. We have to remain open to saying, "We are happy to come and speak about this", to say where we broadly are and be guided by them on the amount of engagement that they think is appropriate. At this early-doors stage, we are keen to engage.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Cathal, you were looking in on one point.

Mr Boylan: Just quickly, Chair, because this is an interesting subject. To be honest, it is a tough ask, but you can break it down in the application process so that you get it right. You said that investors do not come in here. When they put in a big application, they have some of the best people to advise them, so that is not the issue. You have a number of stakeholders, so you definitely have to get it right with them. I know that you need to engage with people besides the general public, the councils, the applicants and the agents — we call them agents, but I mean architects and others — but do you think we will require legislative change at the end of the process?

Mr Beggs: At this stage, we are focusing on this process. It is a pilot to show how the process might change at the end. There will be the Audit Office review of the Planning Appeals Commission, which is to come out in, I think, the autumn. That will make interesting reading, and we will need to respond to it. In the meantime, it is for us to push a few things. Let us see what works here. We think there are things that we can build into the system that will inform any change down the line.

Mr Boylan: Because we have identified the problem — most of the problems have been identified in all the reports that we have done on the PAC, but it is a challenge.

Mr Beggs: There are bits to shave off to get the processes and procedures moving as smoothly as we can.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. I have a last question for you both. Again, Keith touched on this. What is the headline that you want at the end of this? If you could have one headline about what the two projects will, hopefully, achieve in planning and urban drainage, what would it be?

Mr Beggs: I will go first. For me it would be that, when work was ready to go into a hearing, a public inquiry or an examination, it was able to do so immediately. That is the big bit.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Thank you. Simon?

Mr Richardson: For us, it is about getting all the key players to look at dealing with rainwater at source. It is about how we deal with it at source, deal with it more naturally, deal with it on the surface and do not depend on getting it away as quickly as possible through pipes. Let us deal with it on the surface and manage rainwater as it has always been managed — more naturally. It is about looking to use infrastructure that is not concrete and grey but green and blue.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK.

Mr K Buchanan: I have a quick question because I am not clear, Simon, on where you are heading. You have 10,000 cubic metres of storage, whether you call it holdback or whatever else you want; that is probably a better term. Is that for the benefit of, for example, Downpatrick or Belfast as in storm, or are you going to do it for the benefit of NI Water in preventing storm water entering combined systems or slowing water hitting tributaries or rivers in order to prevent flooding? What is your angle here?

Mr Richardson: The pilot is based on the combined sewer network and trying to reduce and slow the flow of rainwater —.

Mr K Buchanan: You are taking storm water out of the combined system, ultimately saving NI Water money.

Mr Richardson: Yes.

Mr K Buchanan: What is NI Water bringing to this?

Mr Richardson: NI Water was already looking at what it calls misconnection —.

Mr K Buchanan: This is £15 million that you are going to use to help it, to be fair.

Mr Richardson: Yes, it is.

Mr K Buchanan: So what is NI Water doing?

Mr Richardson: It is a collaborator. It is working with us on this. It is bringing its expertise to it. It is already working on misconnections, as Stuart said, in the two catchments that we are looking at, so it is doing work there. If we can work collaboratively —. I am not saying that it is going to contribute money, but it is about demonstrating the benefit of this and of working more collaboratively — I cannot think of another word — with NI Water. It is changing —.

Mr K Buchanan: It is taking roughly 10,000 cubic metres out of the combined system, storing it and letting it go slowly into ordinary rivers.

Mr Richardson: It could go into ordinary rivers, it could be the ground, or it could be back into the system at a later —.

Mr K Buchanan: It could go back in.

Mr Richardson: Yes.

Mr K Buchanan: Depending on where it is.

Mr Richardson: It is more likely to go back in. Slowing it down reduces the peak, which —.

Mr K Buchanan: I am interested in getting more detail as that develops, when you start to work out the schemes.

Mr Richardson: Your questions are all right. There is a whole range of things. Where do we go with this? When it comes to the pilot project, £15 million is not a lot of money really, but in answering your questions, I am trying to be as straight as I can. We are focusing on the combined sewer network, and, as I said at the start, NI Water will be the beneficiary of that, but, if there is less pollution, we will all be beneficiaries. The Mansfield pilot was led by Severn Trent Water, which is the water company, so —.

Mr K Buchanan: If you have a few pounds left, drop a couple of strimmers over to Carrickfergus —.

Mr Boylan: There is a wee bit of grass-cutting to be done —.

Mr Stewart: Do not mention it to Andrew; he will have a coronary.

Mr Boylan: — constituencies, so we can [Inaudible.]

Mr K Buchanan: Husqvarna, Stihl — whatever you get.

Mr McMurray: He is not fussy.

Mr Stewart: Sending the sun out.

Mr McMurray: Some Roundup.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): It will be interesting to see how it progresses and what comes out of it.

Mr Stewart: Thanks, guys. This has been really useful.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): As a Committee, we are keen to keep checking in and having a look. In that six-to-nine-month period, when you have more detail, if you could make the Committee aware of that information, we would be grateful. Thank you very much for your time today.

Mr Beggs: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, members.