Sustainable urban Drainage Systems

SuDS mimic natural drainage and aim to reduce the risk of local flooding. They improve water quality and enhance the biodiversity of the environment.

They are a natural solution to meet the increasing challenges of climate change and severe weather and population growth.

In natural environments, rain falls on permeable surfaces like grassland and soaks into the ground. In urban areas, where many surfaces are sealed by buildings and paving, natural soakaway is limited.

Instead, our area may have drainage networks with pipes and culverts to divert surface or rainwater into local watercourses.

In some cases, drainage networks may become overwhelmed with too much surface water and risk local flooding.

SuDS help alleviate these problems by storing surface water, decreasing flow rates to watercourses and improving water quality by natural measures.

SuDS are very important to protect homes from flood risk and provide local nature. We need to make sure they are kept healthy and in good working order.

With lots of reeds and vegetation in brown and green colours they may look messy but this is just natural drainage doing its job.

However, rubbish and fly-tipped bulky items reduce the amount of water that can be stored in the system and impacts how it flows through into the watercourse. By preventing rubbish entering the system we can keep it working successfully.

If you see litter build up or bulky items dumped in the system please contact us through the customer app or by calling our customer hub on 0345 60 20 540.

Fly-tipping is illegal and we may need to report incidents to the police and help clear up dumped waste on our premises.