Home › Posts › Lead Local Flood Authorities (Insight)

Lead Local Flood Authorities (Insight)

October 25, 2024

The focus of our next Insights posts is another hot topic in our world, albeit sometimes for the wrong reasons (sorry everyone) – Lead Local Flood Authorities. Sometimes the bane of a developer’s life, we wanted to step through why the Lead Local Flood Authority (LLFA) is there, what their role is and how that has evolved, whilst also addressing some of the more onerous requirements we see from them in today’s pre-planning world.

So, why do we have LLFAs? Their role was borne out of the Flood and Water Management Act as a means to manage flood risks on a local basis (with the Environment Agency still taking the remit for managing fluvial flooding from main rivers, as well as tidal flooding).

An LLFA is a designated body, typically a county council or unitary authority in England, whose role is defined under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, and includes several responsibilities including:

  1. Local Flood Risk Management Strategy
    • Development and Implementation: LLFAs are required to develop, maintain, apply, and monitor a strategy for local flood risk management in their area.
    • Consultation: They must consult with the public and other risk management authorities when developing this strategy.
    • Coordination: They ensure a coordinated approach to managing flood risk across the local area.
  2. Flood Risk Management Plans
    • Flood Risk Management Plans: They develop and implement plans that set out measures to manage, reduce, and mitigate flood risks.
    • Investigation Duty: LLFAs must investigate significant local flood incidents to identify which authorities have flood risk management functions and what they have done or intend to do.
    • Reporting: They must publish the results of any investigation and notify relevant authorities.
  3. Register of Flood Risk Management Assets
    • Asset Register: LLFAs must maintain a register of structures or features which they consider having a significant effect on flood risk in their area.
    • Record of Significant Assets: This includes assets that are responsible for managing flood risk such as barriers, culverts, and drains.
  4. Consenting and Enforcement
    • Consent for Works: LLFAs have a role in consenting works that affect the flow of water in Ordinary Watercourses (any watercourse, right down to a field drain, which is not classified as a Main River).
    • Enforcement: They can enforce necessary works to ensure proper functioning of watercourses to mitigate flood risk.
  5. SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems) Approval
    • Approval Body: LLFAs act as the SuDS Approval Body (SAB), assessing and approving drainage systems in new developments to manage surface water sustainably.
    • Adoption and Maintenance: They may also take responsibility for adopting and maintaining SuDS in public areas, this was due to be in place in 2024 in England but we are yet to see any LLFAs assume the SAB role. However, it has been in place across the border in Wales for some time now and we cover this in more detail below.

By fulfilling these responsibilities, LLFAs play a critical role in managing local flood risks, improving community resilience, and reducing the potential impacts of flooding on people, property, and the environment.

Day to day, our greatest involvement with LLFAs is through pre-planning consultations in relation to submitted surface water drainage strategies. Whether the LLFA are consulted can sometimes be a bit of a grey area, but most commonly tends to be as follows:

  1. Size of Development:
    • Major Developments: Typically, any development where the area to be developed is 1 hectare or more, or where the development includes 10 or more dwellings or involves the provision of buildings where the floor space to be created is 1,000 square meters or more.
    • Minor Developments: In some cases, smaller developments might also trigger consultation if they are in areas particularly vulnerable to flooding.
  2. Flood Risk Areas:
    • Flood Zones: Any development within an area identified to be at risk of surface water flooding
    • Critical Drainage Areas: Developments within areas identified as having critical drainage issues.
  3. Strategic Infrastructure Projects:
    • Infrastructure Projects: Large infrastructure projects such as new roads, bridges, or utility installations that could impact local flood risk.

Moving on from here and getting to the crux of this article, why are we talking about LLFAs?  At the outset the requirements of the LLFA, in terms of information submitted at the point of planning, was relatively lax. However, as the years have gone on the level of detail required for both outline and full applications has only increased.

In the past two years this has really ramped up in some areas, particularly in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex where we see a level of detail akin to what would have formally been submitted at reserved matters/discharge of conditions stage, being required to support full planning applications. The view from the LLFAs in these counties is that if the layout is to be fixed then we need to be 100% certain the SuDS can be incorporated with no need to revise the layout in the future and submit an application to vary permission at that time. However, the main benefit here is that the LLFA, if managed correctly, will likely not impose a planning condition in relation to drainage. So, at the point of planning permission, at least with regards to drainage, the work is done.

However, the big drawback of this is that an applicant is spending a huge amount of money on the extra detail being requested, without the comfort of a planning permission behind them.  Therefore, this route now causes a significant amount of financial risk for an applicant, especially too if a site layout plan has to change through the application process, which is often the case.

As a standard, and particularly when referring to Norfolk, we are seeing LLFAs request the following key items to support full planning applications:

  1. Fully worked up external and finished floor levels (they tend to request finished floor levels but as we all know the two ultimately go hand in hand here!)
  2. Fully detailed drainage layout plans showing pipe routing, diameter, dimensions, levels and gradients (which often means the foul drainage needs to be designed too to ensure there are no clashes).
  3. Standard details and cross sections for all components of the drainage system.
  4. Detailed infiltration testing where infiltration is being used, along with groundwater monitoring showing a seasonal peak level, if relevant.
  5. Full consideration of permeable contributing areas and all calculations (both greenfield and post development) using the latest FEH-22 rainfall models.

These are just some of the key points which sit amongst a checklist in Norfolk that extends to just over 11 pages.

What we find here is that communication is key, and we have good working relationships with a number of LLFAs across the country. We will always recommend a pre-app is undertaken so we can make the LLFA aware of the scheme and confirm any site-specific requirements, making the transition through planning smoother.

We have also been able to successfully negotiate around certain requirements, where site specifics require it, to ensure the best outcome for the client, whilst also ensuring the LLFA are comfortable with the proposals.

Our personal view here, whilst appreciating the position, is that this is too onerous when you don’t have the benefit of planning permission, given the knock on and often not obvious effects these onerous requirements can have. It is the hand we have been dealt with though, and we continue to work proactively with the LLFA to ensure the proposals we work on move through the system swiftly, with little challenge.

The final point we will touch on in this article, as eluded to above, is SABs. In theory the SABs should be in place now, whereby the LLFA has to not only review and approve SuDS but also adopt them in some instances. In addition, the requirements of the Flood and Water Management Act also mean that any size of development will also be required to include SuDS. As mentioned, in Wales this is already up and running but we are yet to see a local authority in England acting as an SAB. We therefore suspect there is a huge amount of lobbying going on in the background, aimed at our new Labour Government.

To discuss any of the items raised in this article, please reach out to Graham Sinclair or Claire Burroughs.

To engage with this post on LinkedIn, please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lead-local-flood-authorities-insight-createce-2f05e

ABOUT INSIGHT

Insight is our way of discussing ongoing challenges and issues facing our industry. These posts will be separate to our usual news and project posts and identified via the insight tag. Our thought pieces will range from discussions on regulations and legislations, laws and governance to national strategy and local policy.