All Recommendations

By 2025, government should reform public spending frameworks for infrastructure to provide longer term certainty and more effective management by:

• • setting fixed budgets for capital infrastructure for at least five years
  • moving away from annual controls for major capital projects and instead giving major projects a fixed budget with the ability to move money forward and backward across years within that budget
  • accounting for maintenance and renewal spend separately from capital or resource spend — these budgets should be set for at least five years, with departments identifying an indicative longer term pipeline that highlights any particularly large upcoming maintenance or renewal spend
  • giving infrastructure ‘megaprojects’ their own ‘project expenditure limit’ including explicit contingency budgets, separate to the department which runs them
  • adopting the funding profile set out by the Commission’s recommendations in future spending reviews.

By 2025, government should introduce legislation to make at least five-yearly reviews of the National Policy Statements for Energy, Water Resources and National Networks a legal requirement. These statements should include clear tests, refer to spatial plans and set out clear timelines and standards for consultation during pre-application. Reviews should consider the appropriateness of existing and future technologies and thresholds. Government should amend legislation to bring onshore wind into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project system as soon as possible. By 2025, government should also set out the criteria for triggering reviews of other National Policy Statements.

By July 2024, government should introduce a system of modular updates to National Policy Statements linked to primary or secondary legislation to ensure clarity on how future legislative change relates to National Policy Statements.

By the end of 2024 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should introduce a data sharing platform for environmental data with clear data standards, sharing relevant developer and local nature recovery strategy data. By the end of 2025 statutory consultees should develop a library of historic and natural environmental mitigations for different kinds of infrastructure. Statutory consultees should also receive and use new resource to gather baseline data and agree strategic mitigations for urgent infrastructure, firstly for wind generation and electricity transmission, and then water resources, by the end of 2025.

By the end of 2023 government should develop a framework of direct benefits for local communities and individuals where they are hosting types of nationally significant infrastructure which deliver few local benefits.

By the end of 2023 a central coordination and oversight mechanism should be developed, reporting to the Prime Minister or the Chancellor, with measurable targets for reducing consenting times for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

By May 2024 performance indicators for statutory consultees operating under a cost recovery model should form part of compulsory service level agreements with developers, with budget implications for failure to meet agreed service levels. Developers’ applications should only be accepted for examination once a service level agreement is in place.

By the end of 2023, government should implement Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 and update its technical standards for sustainable drainage systems.

Government should undertake a comprehensive review of the effectiveness of all available options to manage unplanned increases in impermeable (or hard) surfaces, and their costs and benefits. By the end of 2024, government should decide whether policy changes are required to reduce the impacts on surface water flooding or adjust investment levels for flood risk reduction accordingly.

Government should:

• require the Environment Agency to use the results of the second National Flood Risk Assessment in 2024 to identify new flood risk areas
• from 2025, require upper tier local authorities, water and sewerage companies, and other relevant authorities in the new flood risk areas to, where necessary, develop detailed local risk maps that can be integrated into the Environment Agency’s national map, and models that can be used to plan future management of surface water flooding.

By early 2025, government should set a long term target for a percentage reduction in the number of properties at high and medium risk of surface water flooding

The government should require risk management authorities in the new flood risk areas to agree appropriate local targets by mid 2025

Government should:

• clarify in its strategic priorities for Ofwat that it should enable water and sewerage companies to invest in solutions to manage surface water flooding including sustainable drainage

Government should require:

• upper tier local authorities, water and sewerage companies, and, where relevant, internal drainage boards in the new flood risk areas to produce and deliver costed, joint investment plans for managing surface water that achieve the agreed local objectives and follow the ‘solutions hierarchy’
• the Environment Agency to review and assure the final plans with input from Ofwat and support from Regional Flood and Coastal Committees, and publish data on progress against local and national targets
• joint plans to be completed by 2026 and revised every five years following the review of flood risk areas the year before, and to inform the following Ofwat Price Review.

By the end of 2025, government should devolve public funding to upper tier local authorities in or containing new flood risk areas, based on the Environment Agency’s assessment of the levels of risk in each new flood risk area. The funding allocation should be reviewed every five years, in line with single joint plan cycles.