For the lack of SuDs
Last night, I attended a meeting to determine key issues in an update of a certain Climate Strategy 2030. In my break-out group, there seemed to be little consensus about drainage issues related to use of plastic turf and sealed surfaces in gardens. Any updated strategy, is written in the context of an 'emergency', which this particular borough declared in 2019. As I look around my own borough, I see a number of recently missed opportunities, including the one pictured above. It is one of a pair beds, each end of an LTN. The opposing bed does indeed have SuDs capability. You can read more about above and below ground infiltration here, which was a commentary on the Cambridge Road Estate urban-drainage-systems . So why is the larger one, non-SuDs? Why have several trees around the school boundary in the same road - been felled - inevitably affecting the local hydrology? I begin to wonder if the SuDs was created as an offset for this tree loss. So there is no actual gain.