Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I welcome Stuart Wightman and Barry Spiers from DFI. Are members content that this session be recorded by Hansard?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): This session is about the sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) consultation. Following this session, another team of DFI officials will be here to talk to us about the Water, Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Bill. I ask members to keep their questions related to the SuDS consultation. I invite Stuart and Barry to make an opening statement.

Mr Stuart Wightman (Department for Infrastructure): Good morning, Chair. Thank you very much for the invite to come here. I am joined by Barry Spiers, my colleague from the Department's water drainage policy division, who will cover a few slides in a moment. I know that this session will be followed by a discussion about the Bill. In recent correspondence with the Department about the Bill, the Committee made a number of very relevant points about the lack of detail on the SuDS regulatory regime, which we are looking at in the consultation. A number of very good points were made on whether it is premature to introduce a Bill, given that some issues have not been resolved.

I understand that you have just received correspondence from us and that you have had a chance to consider it, and I am conscious that the next session is on the Bill. If you do not mind, however, I would like to give a bit of background on the two-stage approach that we are taking and why we are taking that approach. I will take you back to 2022, which is when the Department consulted on the policy for the Bill. That document was called 'Water, Flooding and Sustainable Drainage: Improving how we manage water', and it set out the policy intent behind the Bill. It included a proposal to provide the Department with a power to introduce arrangements to make sustainable drainage systems the preferred drainage solution in new developments, either by regulation or by non-statutory means, such as guidance, which some of the other jurisdictions have. It is worth saying that that was supported by 86% of respondents to the consultation. The primary rationale for adopting our two-stage approach was that, over time, the detailed arrangements to be set out in regulations can be supplemented or amended as our understanding and experience of the design and local application of SuDS continue to mature and evolve. That will ensure that any new regulatory arrangements are appropriately tailored to local needs and are aligned with our devolved institutions, which are somewhat different from those in some other jurisdictions, particularly when it comes to devolved powers to councils and so on.

It is common practice for the primary legislation to include enabling powers to make secondary legislation to facilitate further detailed policy development. One such example is the Planning Act (Northern Ireland) 2011, which sets out the framework for the reformed planning system that came about in 2015. The 2011 Act left much of the operational detail to secondary legislation: for example, permitted development rights were provided for through the Planning (General Permitted Development) Order (Northern Ireland) 2015, which set out a lot of the detail. Typically, the secondary legislation, such as regulations, is used to fill in technical details, such as thresholds or procedures, or to update or amend existing legislation quickly and implement policy change that allows amendments to primary legislation. It is therefore important to note that secondary legislation is also subject to Assembly procedures.

I now turn to the policy and what the regulatory arrangements look like for SuDS. At this stage, I can confirm that the new arrangements will have SuDS design standards as well as technical guidance. There will be a SuDS approval and inspection regime, as well as SuDS adoption and SuDS maintenance and operation. Whilst I am not in a position today to provide detailed costing information on the new arrangements that we will develop over the next 12 months, going by experience elsewhere of a SuDS approval body (SAB) — we may get into that in some of your questions — we are probably looking at a small team with a core of around 10 to 12 people. Wales has a number of SuDS approval bodies that tend to be that size. There may also be some outsourcing of work.

We will move on to look at maintenance costs for the likes of SuDS in more detail. Those will depend on the types of features that are installed. Through the policy work, our focus will be on trying to ensure that the types of features that are brought forward are low maintenance. In England and Wales, maintenance costs tend to be covered by ongoing residents' management fees, or, in the case of Wales more recently, commuted sums are paid by developers to the local authorities on the completion of the development.

Meeting the costs of any new arrangements will be challenging, given the financial pressures facing the Department. I am conscious that you had raised that in the correspondence. Given the increasing impacts of climate change, it will not be feasible to continue to rely solely on traditional engineering approaches, such as bigger pipes, in future. The Department therefore needs a broader range of tools, of which sustainable drainage systems are a key component. Without the new SuDS regulatory arrangements, there will be builders across the country and constituents in all your constituencies who want to build homes but have to wait for clarity on SuDS design standards and need a SuDS approval body. When we met the Construction Employers Federation (CEF) a few months back, one of the concerns that it raised was that it is looking to buy land for developments that might happen five or six years down the line, and it needs to understand the greenfield requirements and the SuDS requirements. That is really important.

Over the next 12 months, we will develop the detailed business case covering SuDS design approval, inspection, adoption, maintenance and operation. That will include an options appraisal for each aspect. We will look at each option in turn to decide the best one. That work will be informed by examining what has worked successfully elsewhere. One place that has been cited by members is Wales, which brought in new arrangements in 2019, and work has been done to review how well that has worked there.

The proposals will be developed through a new sustainable drainage stakeholder group that we have just established, involving key delivery partners including colleagues in DFI Roads, DFI Rivers, DFI planning and policy, DAERA, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), NI Water, local council planners, local council building control and DOF building standards branch.

Alongside that group, we have established an advisory group that will provide expert, impartial advice. It is made up of industry experts, a few of whom, I think, the Committee has met. The advisory group will challenge the Department's proposals in order to ensure that they are evidence-based, practical to implement and aligned with best practice. Members of the group include the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM), the Royal Society of Ulster Architects (RSUA), the Landscape Institute, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Welsh Government and the CEF, representatives of which you have met. The idea is that those organisations will act as a sounding board for the policy work over the next 12 months.

As I said, we will develop a detailed business case that will also be informed by a further public consultation later this year on the regulatory options for each stage of the SuDS arrangements. Subject to the approval of the business case and the passing of the Bill, draft regulations will be tabled at the start of the next mandate, in 2027.

Any new arrangements that are brought forward are likely to be phased in over time so that they can be tested and refined accordingly. Introducing the regime in that evolutionary manner will help to avoid some of the difficulties that were experienced elsewhere: for example, in England and Wales, the primary legislation to mandate SuDS, which is schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, did not come into force in Wales until 2019 and still has not been commenced in England. As a first step in developing the new regime, we completed an initial consultation. Subject to ministerial approval, we will get the consultation report out in the next few weeks. We have shared a copy of it with the Committee.

I am conscious that I have done a lot of talking, Chair. We have half a dozen slides to show the mixture of consultation responses. I will hand over to Barry to run through them, if you are happy that we have time. I will then be happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Yes.

Mr Barry Spiers (Department for Infrastructure): Thank you, Stuart, and thank you, Chair.

The slide pack that we shared with the Committee has a few introductory slides that cover what the consultation contained, the SuDS management train approach, the benefits of SuDS and a few examples. I am sure that members are all aware of those aspects, so I will not cover them in any detail and go straight on to the responses, if that is OK.

The consultation document had seven specific questions and ended with a more open question for general comments. We received 46 responses in total. The respondents were grouped by organisation, and full details of each one are in the consultation document.

The first question that we asked was simple:

Of the 46 responses that we received, 28 were supportive of mandating SuDS in new housing developments, 11 recorded their answer as "No" and four others were "Not Sure". Although 11 opted for "No" and four for "Not Sure", most of those were supportive but not of mandating in all circumstances. Any opposition was around site constraints, density issues and so on.

The second question was this:

That proposal was strongly supported: 36 respondents agreed that the SuDS management train approach should be the preferred drainage solution, while four were against it and four were not sure. That, again, suggests strong support for the general direction of travel with that policy.

The third question was this:

The answers to that may be no surprise. An overwhelming 42 answered "Yes" to that question. It is an issue that we were well alive to, and it was confirmed during our consultation process.

This was the fourth question:

For that one, we gave a range of answer options that we thought would cover the main organisations that would have a role in that. We also included "Other" as an option. Forty-three consultees answered that question, and there was a broad range of suggestions. There are no clear answers. Most responses were about building on the functions that the organisations already provide, so there is no real surprise. "DFI" and "New Drainage Body" were popular options. The "Other" responses favoured a combination of two or more of the options.

The fifth question was this:

The most common view — 28 respondents — was that there should be a hybrid model of "Public Funding & Application Fees". That was followed by "Public Funding Only" or "Application Fees Only". The hybrid model is being used in other areas, and it is the model that we had expected, but it was strongly supported through our consultation process.

This was the sixth question:

We included the same organisations as were in the previous question, and the responses to that were very mixed, with many stakeholders making the case for public adoption through the Department, NI Water or councils or a new, separate SuDS approval body; or others continuing with the private, open-space-type model maintenance. Those were the two main suggestions that we received. Again, most of those were in that "Other" category where people suggested their own mix.

The seventh question was this:

Again, the same range of possible answers was included, and there was a very broad mix of responses. You can see that they are quite evenly spread. There were low numbers across a lot of them, but most consultees suggested some sort of shared responsibility. In the "Other" category, a lot of consultees suggested cost sharing between developers and householders through an initial lump sum payment for establishment and an ongoing maintenance fee, but no single entity came out as the main leader in the answers.

There was an eighth question, which I do not have a slide on. It was about any general points that people wanted to make. It included an element on any impacts on section 75 groups. Again, we received general comments on that. Most of them reiterated points that were previously made in the consultation. Thirty respondents provided additional comments. Some respondents highlighted the positive impacts of SuDS on all section 75 groups and all groups, including public realm, accessibility, health and well-being.

One or two consultees suggested that there may be some negative impacts on elderly people, children or disabled people from poorly designed or poorly maintained SuDS. We will have to look at that further. However, there was an emphasis on poorly designed or poorly maintained assets.

The key themes that came out of the consultation exercise were these: support for the SuDS management train approach; support for regional SuDS guidance; support for making SuDS mandatory, with exceptions; and a need for clear roles and responsibilities. There seemed to be a desire that they were aligned with existing organisational functions. The final theme was consideration of SuDS as part of open space requirements. That is currently within the planning system.

My final slide is on next steps. As Stuart mentioned, they will be around the publication of the current draft consultation report, development of detailed proposals for further arrangements for the design, approval, adoption, operation and maintenance of SuDS in new housing developments.

That will lead to further consultations on these regulatory arrangements later this year, hopefully. That will inform a business case and the draft regulations. We will then develop the business case and the draft regulations for the proposed new regulatory arrangements. That takes us on to questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is great. Thank you, Barry, and thank you, Stuart. I found the consultation interesting. I will pick up on a couple of themes and then open it up to other members.

Stuart, you opened up on a more general theme. Normally, I direct witnesses to speak to the peculiarity of what they are explaining, but, since you opened it up on that theme, I feel that it is legitimate to ask a couple of questions on that. We have correspondence from the Minister in our tabled papers. Question 5 in the consultation was this:

In the Minister's response to the Committee, she is pretty clear that she is not giving us any idea of the costs. I will read out the question:

Her response does not include any costings, but she says that they will be worked out. Your consultation question is asking the public to comment on something that there are not any costs to. How do you explain that? You are asking folks to say how the cost of administering something should be met, and the legislation is saying that, at some point, there will be a cost but that we are not really sure what it is yet. The Minister is not giving us any costs but says that they are being worked out. That, essentially, is what her letter to us says. How can the public make a decision on who should meet the costs of this SuDS approval body when nobody knows what the costs of that SuDS approval body will be?

Mr Wightman: Chair, I understand the point that you are making. The first consultation, to be clear, was an initial high-level consultation. The main purpose of that consultation was to go out and get the buy-in and mandate to take this to the next stage. The first couple of questions that Barry ran through, about the SuDS management train and SuDS being the right thing, were the main driver for that consultation. We wanted to get an opportunity to touch base with the public on what the funding arrangements should be. You are quite right to say that we have not included costings at this stage. That is because we do not have that detail worked out. The costings will be very much dependent upon the model we go for. I accept that.

We will consult again later in the year, and I mentioned that we have evidence from Wales. As I said, in Wales, there are 22 local authorities, so there are, effectively, 22 SABs. I think that there are 19 because a couple of them have buddied up. The approval bodies tend to have a small core team of fewer than a dozen staff. In dealing with the applications, some of the work is outsourced to civil engineering specialists. You could expect something similar here. The difference for Northern Ireland is that we would have one SuDS approval body, potentially. That is what we are aiming for.

One of the issues that has come out from Wales is trying to keep that expertise in one place, and providing consistency of approach is challenging. I think that the members picked up on that the last time that I was here. You do not want every council to have a different approach. I do not want to stray into pre-empting a policy, but, whether it is in central government or in local government, the idea is to have one central body of expertise. As I said, we are talking about the ballpark cost of that, including pension and everything, if it is a civil servant, being £100,000 a person. So, if there are 12 people, the staff costs will be just over £1 million a year. How much would it cost per application? Charges in England and Wales start off at, I think, around £350 per application.

Mr Spiers: It is £350

Mr Wightman: That is the admin cost. The application costs are more or less fully funded in Wales. Whether we end up with it being fully funded or with a charge, that gives you some sense of scale.

We will set out those examples in our next consultation, bring a preferred option to the table and say to the public, "Look, we've examined these options, and we think that this option would sit best in Northern Ireland". That is our aim. I accept the point that you made about the first consultation being very high level and our not having the costs.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I accept that. That will be a key consideration when the Committee is looking at the Bill, which we will do with your colleagues and you in the next evidence session.

I am going to stay with the cost. I have only two questions. One is on the cost issue, which is covered by consultation question 5, and the other is about the approval body. The Minister has written back to the Committee to say that that should all be done through regs — through secondary legislation — and that it should come later. I understand why some things are better being done through secondary legislation. We have just talked about that in the context of graduated driver licensing (GDL). Stuart, you mentioned the Welsh model. We have an economy of scale in Northern Ireland, to a degree, because it is a slightly smaller region. I think that you said that there are 19 approval bodies in Wales. Is that right?

Mr Wightman: There are 22 local authorities, but a few of them have buddied up, so there are 19 SABs.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Take those 19 SABs. You said, as a guesstimate, that there are 12-ish people on each SAB.

Mr Spiers: I do not know. I think that Stuart meant that the number in Northern Ireland would be 12.

Mr Wightman: It might be slightly fewer for Wales. It could be half a dozen for Wales.

Mr Spiers: I do not really know.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I was just doing some maths there. With the Welsh model, if there were 19 bodies and each of them had 12 people, that would add up to more than 216 staff. I accept your point, but it would be a disaster to have more than one SuDS approval body in Northern Ireland. There should be just one, and we can debate who would be on that and what it would look like. My view, which I will put to your colleagues, is that that should be included in the Bill. Do you have any idea, at this point, what the cost of that approval body will be? If you go with the public response, it will be funded partially by public funding and partially by application fees. Are you saying in evidence here today that you do not yet know what that body would cost?

Mr Wightman: I do not have detailed costs. As I said, we could give an estimate of the staff costs, but we would not know how much —. I can give you a sense of the scale. We did a bit of work behind the scenes on the basis of the new regime applying to developments of five or more properties. We had a quick look at a quarter from last year to see how many applications were received in Northern Ireland. Increasing that number pro rata, it would amount to about 150 applications in a year. We looked across to Wales. You have the numbers for that, Barry.

Mr Spiers: Yes.

Mr Wightman: Some of the areas in Wales were up around that mark. When you add them all together, there are a lot more applications in Wales.

Mr Spiers: The Welsh model is slightly different in that those bodies deal with all developments there. For example, a car park or a development of one property or more would have to go to the SuDS approval body. We are taking more of a public drainage approach initially, which could then be expanded to that approach. There would be a difference in the number of applications because of where we see the bar being set for the body here.

Quite recently, Wales carried out a post-implementation review and has openly said that there is a feeling that there are too many SuDS approval bodies there. It is looking to see whether there are economies of scale whereby more of them could come together or there could be some sort of shared service approach.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is fine. I also want to raise something in relation to the summary of responses to consultation question 4, so you may wish to flick to that. Effectively, it asks, "What does a SuDS body look like?" You received quite a range of responses, with the majority suggesting that it should be a new drainage body, whatever that would look like. Stuart, this comes back to what you opened with, which was a standing defence of secondary legislation and how legislation is introduced. As I said, I understand the differences and why, in some cases, primary legislation enables things to come later. My general comment is that there is a lot in the Bill that enables things to come later. I accept that some things in the Bill probably need to come later. When it comes to the SuDS approval body in particular, what, in light of the consultation responses, is the Department's view on what it will look like, where it will sit and who it will be?

Mr Wightman: Any proposals have to go past the Minister. That is my opening gambit.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is good to know.

Mr Wightman: The fact that there is such a spread of responses almost defends the argument. As I said the first time that I was here — I also said it earlier — we are talking about having one organisation here. I mentioned local government and the Department — central government — and there is also Northern Ireland Water. Look at Scotland, England and Wales. In Scotland, Scottish Water adopts SuDS. In England and Wales, the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 has not yet been fully implemented, but, in England, there are SABs under local authorities Acts that adopt SuDS, and most of it is done by private developers. In Wales, where it seems to be working fairly well, the SABs themselves tend to do the approvals. Looking at local government and central government is probably where we are, given what the evidence in the responses shows us, but we will have to do further detailed work on that.

The SAB is a "specified person" —

Mr Spiers: That is in the legislation.

Mr Wightman: — in the legislation. We can take that back to the Office of the Legislative Counsel (OLC) to see whether there is an opportunity to tie "public authority" or "water undertaker" —

Mr Spiers: Harrow has that.

Mr Wightman: — to that, because your concern is, I think, that it needs to be narrowed down.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is my concern.

Mr Wightman: We can certainly take that away, with, as I said, the caveat that we need to go back to OLC — it is the expert on this — and get the approval of the Minister.

Mr Spiers: It is safe to say that there was strong support in the consultation responses for rallying around the existing functions that organisations provide. If we were to follow that thinking — DFI provides a drainage function; NI water provides a drainage function; and councils provide some function — we could quickly narrow down where we are going.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I accept that. It is pretty easy to narrow down where it might sit. My point was that the Committee will have to release the Bill for Consideration Stage by the end of July, yet the legislation that we are looking at, I think, describes as a specified body the organisation that will approve those things. You mentioned a range of models from Scotland, England and Wales, but I am concerned that we will somehow allow legislation to go through without knowing, first, how much it will cost and, secondly, where it will sit or what it will look like.

There are general points that I agree on, such as our not wanting 19 SuDS approval bodies. I hope that, in Wales, those bodies are doing the same thing; with local authorities, you cannot be sure, but I am sure that they are. However, that is not what I want to see in Northern Ireland. I want there to be a body, but I also want to know two things: what that body will cost and where it will sit. That comes back to my concern about this. The Minister's response has given me no comfort whatsoever: when we raised a range of concerns with the Department — I expect to hear from your colleagues in 45 minutes — it basically said, "It's all fine, guv. Don't worry about this".

I will be saying to your colleagues later that I am not happy with that response. If that is the response of DFI, it is my view that the Committee will start drafting amendments to try to correct some of the weaknesses in the Bill.

That is a good example of my wider point about the legislation. DFI does not know how much it is going to cost, what it is going to look like or where it is going to sit. I accept that other bits of the SuDS Bill probably require regs to enable things to be altered to reflect a changing environment and a whole range of other things, but the core thing is not there. That makes me think that it is rushed legislation. The Department should be bringing that to the Committee and saying, "Here's what this costs, here's what it looks like, here's where it's going to sit, and here's what it's going to do", but we do not know that. If you do, you might tell us, but I suspect that you do not know that, either. That is a concern that I have. I will let you respond.

Mr Wightman: I understand. One of the challenges on costs is that it depends on what model you go for and how it is going to be funded. We talk about cost. There is the overall cost of the actual function. If part of that is going to be met by residents, or through a charge or application fees etc, it is the cost to the public sector. There is the overall cost —.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I agree.

Mr Wightman: We can certainly take that away and think about it. We can look at Wales as an example and talk about how much a SuDS approval body would be if we were doing 150 applications a year and what that would look like. We can look at other jurisdictions. We can certainly do a piece of work in that regard. Although we will have a figure, how much of that will be funded privately and how much will be left? That is the challenge. That is the policy that will be determined by the next stage, but I am certainly happy to take that away, look at it and come back to the Committee on it.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is fine.

Mr Stewart: Gents, thanks a lot for coming along today. I know that we will get into the nitty-gritty afterwards, but the Chair has done a really good job of articulating our concerns about the ambiguity of the pre-process cost and the process. It feels as though the cart has been put in front of the horse, and that the Department is saying, "We'd like to achieve something, but we haven't really decided what we're going to do about the key aspects of it yet — either how it's going to be funded or how it's going to work". That is quite concerning for the Committee, given how far on we are.

I do not want to labour the points that the Chair made about how we get to where we want to get to with the process and the cost; I want to get to questions 6 and 7 of the consultation, which are about who is responsible for maintaining it and paying for it once it has been built and implemented. The responses say to me, "We don't want it, guv". Nobody wants the responsibility; the responses say that others should pay for it and maintain it.

Will you break down the responses? Did all 11 councils respond? What are their thoughts? What is NI Water's response? What is the Department's response? If the Department, or a body associated with it, takes it on, will I, as a local representative, have to bang a drum every day to get the Department to do the statutory job that it is meant to do? We, as elected representatives, are struggling to get the Department to do some of its key roles at the minute because of the financial pressures on it. What is your take on that, and what were thoughts of respondents on who should be doing it and who should be paying for it?

Mr Wightman: I keep pointing back to Wales because it is working fairly well there. There are some points of learning from there. Traditionally in Wales, it would have been a management fee and a management company. I live in a development that has a management company. Things have changed recently: it is tied into your deeds now. There are still residents whose management companies have gone into administration and so forth. There are bad examples in that regard, but, in Wales, it would traditionally have been a management fee. It has moved to the commuted-sum approach, which probably means that a figure is added to the cost of a property. Those are tallied up, and a formula is used to basically say, "Over the next 25 years, this is how much it's going to cost to maintain the SuDS". That is paid at the handover of the development, before it is adopted.

You can see the mixture of responses. One of the challenges that we face — I have put it in bold letters — is that whatever we come up with has to be appropriate for Northern Ireland, our institutions and our governance arrangements. In England and Wales, there are household water charges, and, if there is a sustainable nature-based drainage system, I think that, in some places, you get a discount. The point that I am making is that there are different funding models. At the minute, the management fee in Northern Ireland is probably the only sort of —. In Northern Ireland, if you buy a new property, you tend to know whether you will pay a management fee. The only other option is rates. The point that I am making is that how these things will be funded can drive the option that you go for. I will hand over to Barry on the mixture of responses.

Mr Spiers: I did a very quick count there, and, unless I have counted it wrong, 10 of the 11 councils responded. You are quite right: there was no clear winner. It is no surprise that neither the councils, NI Water nor the other people whom you mentioned said, "We should pay". Nobody said that.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): No, I would not have thought that they did.

Mr Spiers: You are quite right. There is an acceptance from some of them that it is not all new costs. Grass cutting is already happening, so there are certain elements that could be included. Some of the routine maintenance could be covered by existing maintenance functions, if they are well designed. There will, without a doubt, be additional costs, but those costs are offset by not having to put hard infrastructure in the ground. Not everything will be new, but nobody is putting their hand up to take on responsibility. There was certainly no clear winner. There was a broad range of suggestions. Some people suggested rates systems and all sorts of things. We are working through and looking at a series of things, but, yes, nobody was putting their hand up saying, "Yes, I will take them. We are the best people to maintain these in the future".

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): OK. That is certainly what I extrapolated from the responses. It sounds to me, though, that the direction of travel in that respect is that residents will end up paying.

Mr Wightman: No. As I said, we will do an options appraisal on each of those things. That will be a full economic appraisal. Yes, a management fee will be on the table. There might be a combination of a management fee and something from central government or rates. We will look at the different options. The thing about the management fee is that — I think that we talked about this before — if we can get to the stage where the green space requirements in developments double up as drainage — SuDS — as Barry said, you are cutting the grass anyway and paying a management fee for that, so, effectively, there is not really much more there.

The challenge will be with the below-the-ground maintenance that you might have to do once every five years or something like that, such as desilting. A management fee is attractive for that reason because it could cover the routine maintenance elements, but there are legacy issues associated with management companies.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): It is a valid point, Stuart. I am sure that there are some examples around the country where people are paying management fees and they have a really good representative organisation. I can tell you that there are hundreds of people — my phone is off the hook with them ringing, and it is the same for other representatives — who cannot even get their grass cut despite paying a ridiculous maintenance fee every year. It is not just about grass cutting. SuDS is not a massive thing and it is not hugely new, but it is slightly more complex than just cutting the grass.

Mr Wightman: It is.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): There are some residents who are paying ridiculous amounts of money, as well as their rates, and they still cannot get that maintenance done. I have a fear that this will fall into that crack and that, because there is ambiguity about who is responsible, when it comes to so many areas on the periphery of developments, we will, in five or 10 years' time, end up asking, "Who is cutting and maintaining this?". We know the problems with management companies. We have seen them time and time again.

Mr Spiers: That is one of the functions that we see a SuDS approval body having: responsibility for overseeing that maintenance and ensuring that it is carried out.

Mr Wightman: And enforced. There needs to be enforcement.

Mr Spiers: It would not be a case of build and forget.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): OK. We are not suggesting that there could be a myriad of different approaches to maintenance and funding.

Mr Wightman: No.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): There will be a body, and consistency is the key.

Mr Wightman: The consistency has to be—.

Mr Spiers: It absolutely will not be a case of things being done differently in different place.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): Yes, so whatever is approved will apply to all

Mr Spiers: That is our intention.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): OK.

Mr Wightman: To clarify, in Wales the local authorities adopt, and there is a commuted sum. The councils adopt the features, which is different from the situation in other jurisdictions. They can use the rates and the council tax.

Mr Spiers: The local authority will do it through the SuDS approval body.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): I cannot imagine what my local council would think about taking on maintenance responsibility. However, those are the problems, and we will need clarity on them because the system will only be as good its two weakest points. How do we get to that point and how do we then maintain it? Those are valid concerns. I may come back later, but that is all from me.

Mr Harvey: How many people sit on the advisory group that you mentioned?

Mr Spiers: Stuart listed the group in his speaking notes.

Mr Wightman: About half a dozen, mostly from representative organisations. We are in the process of setting up the group, and there are seven people in it. You met with ICE and the Construction Employers Federation.

Mr Harvey: Will they continue to be employed?

Mr Wightman: We have deliberately kept the group separate from the stakeholder group. The stakeholder group works in the current system and engages with DFI Roads, those involved in planning policy, council planners and building control officers and the Department of Finance's building standards branch. Representatives from those areas will develop the proposals with the stakeholder group, and the advisory panel will check our homework and be a sounding board for us. We have engaged with a representative from the Welsh Government, who has been through the process and has the scars from it. We have touched on some of the issues, such as the need for consistency in the approval body. There are lessons that were learned elsewhere that we can take into account.

Mr Spiers: We can learn lessons from the people who have been there and done it. While we are doing a lot of work behind the scenes with the people who are working on other systems, the advisory group is a higher-level group that will sense-check the system.

Mr Harvey: Are you accountable or answerable to that group?

Mr Wightman: We appoint them as a panel and as part of the policy development process. As we bring forward policies, we will arrange a workshop with the members of the advisory panel. We will give them our proposals and get their input and advice on the options that are being worked up.

Mr Harvey: How long will you keep the group in position?

Mr Wightman: We are looking initially at two years, and that will take us up until the regulations are completed and into the next mandate. There is no reason why we would not extend the life of the group. As I said in my opening remarks, and as Barry mentioned, we are likely to phase it in over time. We might also extend the group's remit to include retrofitting. If there is a SuDS approval body doing new developments, the same organisation can look at retrofits. There is an opportunity to extend the remit of the group.

Mr Harvey: Thank you.

Mr McReynolds: I have a very basic point that touches on the concerns of the Chair and the Deputy Chair. I am broadly supportive of SuDS. They are great from a water management and environmental perspective, and I am fully behind them. However, I looked at the consultation document, which has a SuDS on the front cover. Can you talk me through the tangible delivery of the SuDS on the front cover of the document? I am not clear on how any of it will work, and I fear we are maybe overcomplicating something that is quite straightforward. I have heard about advisory boards and the different individuals who are getting involved and wonder whether we are overcomplicating something that is quite straightforward. Can you talk me through the consultation document image? If that is concrete, can someone contact the Department about it to get advice. If they want to put something like that in place and it is not as good as that, can they go and get advice? I am not clear about what that looks like.

Mr Wightman: We advocate the SuDS management train approach. At my last visit to the Committee, I explained that there are some local examples. The Committee did a site visit to one in Antrim. Some of the developers did end-of-pipe interventions, such as the wetlands in Antrim and the Belmont Hall development, which are great. However, to implement true SuDS, you have to do it right throughout the development, because this is about managing rainwater where it falls. At street level, you would design it in such a way that, instead of having rows and rows of gullies, you would have a shallow swale — as shown on the front cover of the consultation report — going along one or both sides of the road, or even in the centre.

The other important thing about the SuDS management train approach is that it cannot be an afterthought: you have to design to minimise the number of impermeable spaces or surfaces that you have in your development and minimise the amount of surface water that your development creates. That is quite a change in process for developers, because, traditionally, you put in the footprint of all the properties and see how much surface water that generates.

Mr Spiers: You would just collect it and move it.

Mr Wightman: This means that you need to think about SuDS and plan for them from the start. Therefore, it is about planning in order to maximise the amount of permeable space so that it can take the rainwater.

Mr McReynolds: Take the image on the front of the consultation document. Say, I am a housing association or private developer. Talk me through how you go from concrete to that. Is that part of the planning process?

Mr Wightman: Sorry: yes. I missed your point earlier.

Mr McReynolds: Who am I contacting?

Mr Wightman: Yes, that would be part of the planning. There would be a SuDS approval function, as I talked about with the Chair. It could be with local government, central government or NI Water, but that function would be consulted upon as part of the planning process. It would be a body of expertise that the councils could go to. Councils would receive a plan of the development, which would have drainage proposals on it. That would be submitted, scrutinised and reviewed.

Mr Spiers: That links to the good guidance. We talked about local guidance. Developers and designers would have the guidance in place on what is expected in a new development, such as the swale that we have here, so they would design their new developments with those features built in from the outset in lieu of gullies, underground tanks, pipes and that network.

Mr Wightman: The guidance would show what a typical street would look like. There is an old DRD and DOE planning document called 'Creating Places'. That would need to be updated to show cross sections of different types of streets and how you might have the swale alongside the footpath.

Mr Spiers: Yes. We probably envisage that you could consult the SuDS approval body pre-application and pre-consultation. That is what happens in Wales. Developers can get a good handle on what is expected before they actually start to design their developments.

Mr McReynolds: Lastly, you mentioned phasing it in. A lot of it is a no-brainer, to be honest. What does phasing look like? Are we talking months or years? We should be cracking on.

Mr Wightman: Well, I suppose that there are different ways in which we can phase. We can do it geographically, by the scale of the development, or you can create your SuDS approval body but not make it mandatory to begin with, because, at the minute, councils are crying out. It would become mandatory over a number of years. It is more about understanding the cost of the process and the time that is taken to review applications, and so forth.

Mr Spiers: It will be an evolutionary process. Earlier, Stuart talked about new developments. We would have the facility there. If you wanted to put SuDS in, you would come to the SuDS approval body for approval. Hopefully, very quickly, we would get to the stage where we would expect you to put SuDS in. You would come to the SuDS approval body. Then it could be retrofitting.

Ultimately, property-level SuDS, green roofs and all that have to come in somewhere. Would the body look at that? We do not know. At the moment, it is for building control officers to do that. We are on a journey moving from traditional solutions to blue-green solutions. That journey will continue to evolve. Will we ever sit back and say that it is fully implemented? No, because something new will come along. We will keep working at it.

Mr McMurray: Thank you, Mr Wightman and Mr Spiers. I want to very briefly return to one thing that you said, Mr Wightman. You said that those had to be designed in new developments. I was under the impression that there could be retrofitting of the systems. Sorry, have I misunderstood something?

Mr Wightman: No, everything that we are talking about today is about new housing developments. That is the focus. We are doing a separate piece of work through the transformation project, where we are doing retrofit and trying to understand the costs and the different types of features that you can retrofit to manage surface water. We are obviously doing that. Today, we will be down at the Harbour Commissioners to talk about the pilot retrofit project that we are doing. At this stage, we are not looking at retrofitting as part of this, but, as Barry said, once we have a SuDS approval function established and have the experts, why would you not use them?

The retrofit bit is slightly different. NI Water is the key delivery partner there. We are looking at areas where spills are happening —.

Mr McMurray: That is OK, sorry. When you said that, I was worried that I had confused myself.

Mr Spiers: It is about having it designed in. Knowing that you want to include it at the very outset of your development is a lot easier than having 50 houses designed with a road network and then somebody saying, "We want SuDS in that now". That is the bit that we are talking about designing in.

Mr McMurray: I will not paraphrase or go over the ground that some of my colleagues have already covered. As my colleague said, it is a good idea. Everyone has said that it is a good idea. It makes sense, and we have seen it in operation in Belmont Hall, in Antrim. However, we are still unsure about how the approval body will be set up. That is an issue. The costs and how they are set out in the legislation are a concern.

Finally, as Mr Stewart articulated, probably more clearly than I did, this is a story as old as time. Something will be set up for maintenance but then falls. Is it x, y and z or a, b and c? That will be a whole shouting match, and we will spend all our time running around, writing letters and running from pillar to post looking for proof, when setting it out clearly would be much easier.

Apologies, Chair, I do not really have a question; they have all been asked. It seems like a good idea, but, as this is my first rodeo, I am concerned about where and how the policy and legislation will fit with each other. There is a concern that we do not know where we are with the legislation. That will be an issue. I will stop there, Chair.

Mr Wightman: I accept what you are saying. I have said to the Chair that I am happy to look at whether there is some way to narrow that down. It will not be a single option because there will still be a number of potential funding options here. We will look at that.

Mr McMurray: The funding is one thing, but it is becoming ever clearer to us that unless the approval body is explicitly tied down, it will become an issue somewhere else down the line. Is that OK, Chair?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): You are fine. I am conscious of anyone else wanting to come in on that one. Justin?

Mr McNulty: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Stuart and Barry. Thank you to the students from St Louise's who have just entered the room, who, I am sure, are very interested in SuDS and thinking, "What the hell is that all about?" [Laughter.]

SuDS are sustainable urban drainage systems. Essentially, that means that, when it rains, you want the rainfall running off any site to be equivalent to or less than the greenfield run-off that would have been there prior to developments or hard surfaces being installed on that development. That is as simple as it is here, folks: it prevents flooding downstream.

To what degree have you folks been aligning your standards with those elsewhere on the island?

Mr Wightman: I did not mention earlier what the likes of Dublin are doing. We have been looking at all the jurisdictions. The Republic has done a lot of work on guidance on SuDS, particularly in and around Dublin. They rely primarily on the guidance and the planning process. Barry and I talked about this, the other day. Dublin City Council, in particular, is promoting SuDS. It goes back to the point that you made: what happens after an applicant has submitted the drawings with the SuDS and it gets the stamp of approval? They have not legislated for that. We are trying to legislate for the whole process from the point of application, to inspecting, to making sure that they build what they say they are going to build, through to making sure that it is maintained properly.

In the South, particularly Dublin, they have very much pushed the guidance and approval through the planning system. What is not clear is the enforcement that happens afterwards. We are looking at the regimes down South and in Wales. At the minute, the experience Wales is standing out as the best. Scotland is slightly different, because it is looking at Scottish Water taking on some of the systems. In Scotland, it has to be an end-of-pipe system: it will adopt a swale and pond, but it has to be an end-of-pipe system. That is almost going against the SuDS management train approach that we advocate.

On your first point, we are looking at the successes in the South, particularly in the greater Dublin area, and learning from those, as we are from some of its challenges.

Mr McNulty: It is good to see that your document borrows from the South Dublin County Council design guidelines. It is positive that you are learning from what it has done. There is very detailed guidance from South Dublin County Council that we can learn from and borrow to ensure that we have in place the best system possible. It makes more sense for it to align and ally with what is happening on this island instead of with what is happening across a sea.

Multiple consultees responded to the consultation. Which two political parties responded?

Mr Wightman: The SDLP and the Alliance Party.

Mr McNulty: The SDLP and Alliance were the only two parties to respond to the consultation. That is interesting. To what degree is rainwater harvesting embedded in proposals?

Mr Wightman: I think that I explained one of our challenges when I was last here. We have talked about phasing this in, and we might roll it out even further, but, at this stage, property-level SuDS are outside the scope of the Bill because they are controlled by the building standards branch in the Department of Finance. We have representatives on the stakeholder group, but, at this stage, we are focused on the bit that is adopted when a new development is built. We are trying to have nature-based solutions instead of gullies and pipes. Property-level SuDS include rainwater harvesting, grey-water harvesting, permeable paving and water butts. We have shown them in our slides — they are the first tier of the champagne fountain. At this stage, we are focused on the second tier: street-level SuDS.

Mr Spiers: That is part of what I was saying. It is a journey that we are on. We will see that come in the future.

Mr McNulty: It is fascinating; I am intrigued by it. I am a civil engineer, and I designed SuDS into schemes in Dublin 30 years ago. Take, for instance, a developer in the North who sees a site and wants to get moving and get houses built — obviously, we are not building enough houses here, there is a homelessness crisis, and it is a big barrier to our economic progress — and that developer looks at what the Department for Infrastructure and the Minister are saying about the three-pronged approach being the cure-all for the waste-water challenges that are blocking development. How confident should that developer be that the three-pronged approach will deliver capacity to get houses built?

Mr Wightman: The sustainable drainage that we are talking about in the Bill is linked to new developments, primarily. If you get to the stage where the development is effectively surface-water neutral, which means that most of the rainwater is being managed at source, there is probably more opportunity for such developments to proceed than there is for developments that are built traditionally, because traditional developments will put even more pressure on the sewerage network.

Mr McNulty: That is a standstill.

Mr Wightman: Yes, in terms of new developments, you are right. The new developments are not going to directly address —. Significant investment is needed in the waste water system. I was involved with the living with water programme, so I have first-hand knowledge of what is needed in Belfast, particularly around Kinnegar, Duncrue, Whitehouse and Sydenham. That investment is still needed, but the most important thing is that we do not let the situation get any worse. Any new development has to have a footprint from a climate change and surface water point of view. Traditionally, everything has been about getting the water into a pipe and chucking it down the catchment as quickly as we can. We have to turn that on its head and manage it where it lands.

Mr Spiers: it is about making the best use of —.

Mr Wightman: It is about making the best use of the system. Significant investment is needed in our waste water and sewerage systems, but, alongside that, we need more nature-based solutions, whether that be in new developments or in the retrofit transformation project that I mentioned earlier.

Mr McNulty: It is a brilliant proposal and way forward, which will make developments much more appealing to the eye and nicer places in which to live.

Mr Wightman: If they are done right. That is why I am saying that it is so important to regulate for the full amount from start to finish. I agree, definitely.

Mr McNulty: Thank you, folks.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Thank you, gentlemen, for your evidence today. I am tempted to ask whether any students from St Louise's College want to come up and give us some evidence on sustainable drainage solutions; they will be very welcome to do so. I suspect that not too many of them will want to take the chairs either side of you, Barry and Stuart, but they are very welcome to the Committee.

To sum up this session, I echo the comments of all Committee members that the SuDS policy intent is a good one. No Committee member is going to disagree with that. I happen to think that this is a really positive scheme. The cascading champagne model that you showed us, Stuart, is a good example of that. It is one of the Minister's three prongs to deal with waste water infrastructure. Justin, more or less, summarised my next point fairly well in pointing out that this prong is only really going to make the situation no worse than it is. You alluded to that in your answer, Stuart, in that it is about trying to contain water so that it does not go down the pipe. That is a key aspect of it.

In my view, this prong is not massively holding up the overall strategy in an amazing way. There is no doubt that it is something that will have some impact in future, and we have heard evidence on that. That impact will be relatively small, but that does not mean that we should not do it. I happen to believe in the theory of marginal gains: if you do enough small things, you end up with quite a substantial gain. That said, I am still concerned about just how developed this policy is, and the sheer level of intent that the Bill will provide regarding secondary and enabling legislation. I am not going to open that up now, because that is something that we will take on with you and your colleagues in the next session.

Thank you very much for your evidence, which has been useful. We appreciate your coming to the Committee, providing us with the wider responses and answering questions on the consultation. We appreciate that. Thank you very much.