Renfrewshire Council

Interreg III B NWE

Urban Water Project

Strand No 3

Spatial Management of Water Infrastructure Regeneration

Project Strand No 3 Main Co-Participants.

• Renfrewshire Council (RENF).

• ScottishWater (SW).

• University of Abertay, Dundee (AU).

• Paisley University (PU).

• Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).

Key Participants Within the Department of Planning & Transport.

• Maintenance teams.

• In house contractor teams .

• Planning (strategic, environmental and operational) teams.

• In house design consultancy teams.

• In house economic development teams

Influences

• SEPA’s River Basin Management Plan (RBMP).

• Earlier Development Plans and subsequent development pressures / constraints.

• Available funding.

• Existing infrastructure deficiencies.

• Available asset management data.

Implementation of Water Network Improvement Flow Diagram

LA Planning InfluencesBasic

FloodingHydrology

SEPASWLA

LA SPP 7 DevelopmentPlan

SEPAWFD

StatutesRBMP

WaterInfrastructureRegeneration

High Return Period Flows

Low Return Period Flows

Operational

Strategic

Public Finance

Private Finance

Statutory Consultees

Legislation &Funding

The Operational / Strategic Split.

• Water infrastructure must deal with both frequent and infrequent events.

• Pollution and flooding occur within both types of events.

• Frequent events are generally considered operational matters, and are dominated by pollution concerns.

• Infrequent events are generally considered strategic matters and are dominated by flooding concerns.

• The split is currently considered to lie within the 20 to 50 year return period event.

Operational Matters.

• Draining roads, roofs and yards.

• Maintaining detailed sewer network multi-node models.

• Maintaining the hydraulic efficiencies of sewers and watercourses.

• Pollution control.

• Applying planning regulation to proposed development, based upon the Development Plan.

• Applying development constraints relating to existing sewer infrastructure.

• Retrofit works.

Strategic Matters.

• Determining the level of regulation to be placed upon development to enable individual development to be properly integrated within the sub-catchment.

• Determining the preferred standard details and guidance that through operational observance will deliver the flood and pollution risk reduction aspirations sought.

Key Statutes / Guidelines Required for Sustainable Improvement of the Water Infrastructure.

• The Water Framework Directive.

• The Scottish Planning Policy “Planning and Flooding” (SPP 7)

The Water Framework Directive.

• Promotes regulated pollution control to facilitate environmental improvements.

• Impacts substantially on operational matters, particularly in respect of sewer overflows into watercourses.

• Regulated by Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), probably using spatial plans within a River Basin Management Plan (RBMP).

• Will take account of future development by incorporating Local Authority spatial development plans.

The Scottish Planning Policy “Planning and Flooding” (SPP 7)

• Allows Planners to seek improvement in respect of the water network.

• Requires flooding, relative flooding risk, drainage, global warming, Surface water runoff pollution control, and groundwater to be taken into consideration in the Development Plan.

• Presumes for the deculverting of watercourses.

• Sets out a basic flood risk framework to form the basis for Development Plans for land allocation and Development Control decision making.

• Available on www.scottishexecutive.gov.uk/library5/planning/spp7.pdf

Building on SPP 7 to form the Development Plan.

• Identify watercourses and key constraints on improvements.

• Determining the magnitude of sub-catchment runoff control required.

• Determining the magnitude of regional SuDS control required.

• Determining the layout of the ‘virtual’ functional arterial surface water network that will form the basis of the development Plan.

• Determining where the opportunity for betterment should be preserved.

The Development Plan

• Geographical Information System maps.

• Guidelines.

Geographical Information System Maps.

• Need to include layers of different information.

• Sub-catchment storage requirements.

• Sub-catchment arterial drainage aspirations.

• Sub-catchment virtual functional watercourse layouts.

• Sub-catchment regional SuDS locations.

• Sub-catchment areas of safeguarded opportunity for flood risk and pollution reduction.

Guidelines.

• Guidelines will support the GIS maps contained within the Development plan.

• Watercourse maintenance.

• Enhanced SuDS.

• Balanced approach to storage requirements.

Development of Guidelines.

• Using Hec Ras, FEH and Infoworks software, determine the watercourse capacity at different locations.

• Using the critical durations for the worst cases, compare with the 200 year standard, and determine the storage requirements to apply to the whole sub-catchment.

Finance

• Water Infrastructure betterment requires financing.

• The financing period must reflect the opportunity to sustainably build out unacceptably high levels of flood risk.

Conclusion

• Essential statutes and national guidelines are now sufficiently in place to enable the betterment of urban water infrastructure to be set out, as aspirations, within the Development Plan, in partnership with ScottishWater and SEPA.

• Such aspirations will target the continuous and sustainable building out of flood risk to the urban environment.

• The setting out of these aspirations in a coherent and readily understandable format will require the best available in house Engineering and Planning expertise available.

• Operational matters will be influenced by the Development Plan and vice versa, whilst retaining their distinctly different funding, statute and political drivers.