Rethinking Water Planning

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Why is the project relevant to you?

Better integration of planning for water is an ambition in the 25 Year Environment Plan. Local authorities are also moving towards a more integrated approach to the creation/collation of the water evidence supporting local plan production. Moving forward it is likely that you will display your understanding of the impacts on opportunities your developments will have on the whole water system. This project provides you with examples of some of the ways that this full understanding can be gained and explained.

Key messages for Developers & Infrastructure

The use of participatory mapping by this project demonstrates a way to analyse the impact of decisions and priorities across the whole of a system. This project demonstrates this at a catchment level, but it could equally be applied at a site level.

There are many investment opportunities and environmental needs highlighted through the statutory water planning process. Many of the more 'nature based' of these solutions are currently descoped early in the development process. Although these proposed approaches will hopefully reduce this there is still a significant opportunity for some of these measures to be delivered as part of BNG type requirements.

When thinking about water related issues that you might be able to help resolve through your development, the consideration of the water management catchment areas is highly recommended rather than rigidly sticking to political boundaries. What you do on your site and in the vicinity could have benefits much further down or us the river catchments.