Member

What is very apparent is that government objectives are not consistent and there is a lack of alignment between the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which the Minister this evening represents, and Defra, which is quite keen on making SUDS mandatory. Put simply, if you cannot manage what you are putting into the sewerage system, you cannot control what comes out of the sewerage system. It is surely in the Government’s interest and economically sound to place more responsibility on housing developments to ease infrastructure pressure. While one might be agnostic about the type of system which is evolving, whether it is SUDS, or perhaps ponds, or a more natural solution such as we had with the Slowing the Flow at Pickering project, which has been enormously successful, or more hard infrastructure, such as the large reservoir that was first envisaged in the Pickering project but which was simply too expensive, it does not matter as long as they are well maintained, whatever other infrastructure is produced.