Flood & Coast conference roundup

We have summarised the barriers and ideas discussed below. Our next steps are to review them against what is already happening in the programme to see how they can be included and look to set up ongoing engagement.

Key barriers discussed:

• Public Perception and Buy-In – Sometimes significant time and investment is needed to convince the public as to the efficacy and benefits of NbS (as long-term benefits are often not given so much weighting by the public).
• Conflicting priorities – Limited budgets and competing priorities (flooding, housing, highways) make alignment challenging.
• Ownership and maintenance Issues – Ongoing maintenance of nature-based solutions can be problematic with unclear funding mechanisms.
• Regulatory, legal and Insurance Challenges – Uncertainty about insurance acceptance and coverage for nature-based solutions and lack of standardised legal agreements that can be used between local authorities, water companies and land owners.
• Need for More Evidence – More robust evidence is required to support the effectiveness of these solutions.
• Skill Gaps – Local authorities lack the necessary skills and knowledge for implementation and maintenance and also have trouble finding these wider supply chains.
• Issues with local authority boundaries not allowing a catchment-based approach – limits the extent and impact of the strategy and limiting the ability of local authorities to fund things outside of their area.

Ideas for what the programme can do:

• Communicate more relevance of co-benefits e.g. office spaces filling up – building up council tax rates when businesses come in and offices are full or stopping the roads from flooding has freed up x amount of officer hours, which means that this time could be better spent here or this many cost savings.
• Helping to educate the public on the benefits of NbS to get more people outside.
• Drive consistency in approach by the local and regional EA teams through a national mandate.
• Supporting and training for LLFAs, LPAs and highways.
• Local authority mentoring scheme / knowledge sharing from those who have been able to successfully deliver the schemes.
• Clear roles and responsibilities and funding for maintenance in the medium term e.g. for for developers to maintain or for maintenance funding to be explicitly provided to the LA.
• National or local standards – cannot get them approved if there are no standards. No way to advise a developer on what they need to do and what kind of surveys they need.
• Changes to the planning system on how surface water is to be dealt with should be at the outline planning stage and not left to the end.
• Driving requirements on the highways authority and highways teams to deliver NbS – particularly retrofitting SuDs on highways.