Debate contribution: Water, Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr John Stewart on 16 September 2025.

MLA

Mr John Stewart

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

16 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Water, Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5111353

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Before I make my remarks, I will echo the comments of the new Chair of the Infrastructure Committee. I send my best wishes to Deborah and her husband and wish her all the very best. I look forward to seeing her back in her position on the Committee.

In the meantime, I look forward to working with the new Chair, Mr Peter Martin. I do not mean to be dismissive at all, Peter. I have no doubt that you will bring a lot to the Committee, and I look forward to working with you as we scrutinise the Bill and do much of the other work that the Committee needs to do. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Second Stage debate on the Water, Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Bill. At the outset, let me say that my party and I support the principles of the Bill. It is clear that our water and drainage infrastructure is under severe and growing pressure, and it is right that we update the legislative framework to reflect the challenges of today. As Committee colleagues have already said, the Bill sets out to do a number of important things, including reducing pollution in our watercourses; strengthening our resilience against flooding and drought; promoting sustainable drainage and the preferred way of managing surface water; and improving the overall management of our water resources through environmentally friendly solutions. Those are not abstract concepts; they go to the heart of the challenges that our communities face, whether those be the devastating floods that we have witnessed in recent years that have destroyed homes and businesses or the real constraints that underinvestment in our water network has placed on housing and economic growth. The consequences of inaction have been clear over many years. As Infrastructure Committee colleagues will know, we heard last year from departmental officials and from Northern Ireland Water, which will be a key driver in delivering many of the reforms that the Minister wants to bring in. As others have done, I thank the departmental officials for their assistance to date and to Northern Ireland Water for its engagement. I also thank everyone who contributed to the consultation and who contacted me about it in order to raise their concerns. I know that they will continue to do so as the Bill makes its way through the House. There are several provisions in the Bill that deserve particular emphasis. I do not want to go into too much detail at this stage, because we are discussing the principles of the Bill, but it is important to discuss a few of them. The first is the encouragement of the use of sustainable drainage systems, which will be critical in managing surface water in a way that reduces flood risk and supports environmental protection. Again, we see increasing numbers of examples of the devastating impact of floods in recent years, as well as the impact on pollution.

Secondly, the Bill provides for Northern Ireland Water to adopt private drainage infrastructure that was built before 1973 where it benefits the wider network. That has long been campaigned for and is a welcome addition to the legislation. It has the potential to improve resilience and tackle some long-standing legacy issues, though the scrutiny needs to be looked at to see how the benefit-to-the-network test could be applied. I will go back to that in my comments when I go through the Bill clause by clause. Thirdly, strengthening powers to address miscommunications in the system is a positive and necessary step. As we know, miscommunications are a major source of water pollution. It is right that the Department has stronger tools to tackle that problem, although, again, I have concerns about enforcement and the ability or willingness to carry that work out and the costs that go with it. That may be for Northern Ireland Water to address. We know the difficulties that we have with the lack of adoption of roads and the long-standing costs associated with bringing those into the network. I am very interested to hear whether there will be the money and resource to ensure that the work happens in those critical instances. The Bill places the homeowner flood protection grant scheme on a statutory basis. That is a welcome development. We all know families who have faced the trauma of flooding. Giving them greater certainty and support to invest in preventative measures is an important part of building community resilience. I am keen to hear how the assessment criteria will be worked out and what will be done to ensure that the roll-out can be worked through with local councils and with cross-departmental overlap. I am keen to hear more about the criteria. I echo the points made by my colleague from the Alliance Party, who talked about the potential to extend that to commercial premises, because we all know the devastating impact that recent floods have had on commercial property. All that is important, as we know, because sadly, those events are becoming more and more regular. An issue that underpins all of this discussion is funding. As we know, Northern Ireland Water continues to operate under a constrained financial model. We have seen how chronic underinvestment, in our freshwater and waste water systems, has led to developments being stalled, homes not being built and businesses not being able to expand. That is, quite simply, unsustainable and unacceptable. The Bill alone will not fix that wider funding crisis, but it provides useful additional powers that, if backed by resource, can deliver incremental improvements and build resilience into the system. However, without sustained and sufficient investment, there is a real risk that those powers will remain underused. Other Members have flagged that up, and we will be keen to get into that in the Committee Stage. The Ulster Unionist Party and I support the principles of the Bill. We see merits in every aspect of it. I do not want to get into too much detail. Mr Boylan will be saying, "It is only the principles now. We are not getting into the nitty-gritty today". Cathal, I promise not to do that, but I would like to flag up a couple of points on which it would be useful to get answers from the Minister, whether today, in writing or as the Committee brings them up. The Minister, in her remarks, referred to the extension of the hosepipe ban. We all understand that. It is rare that we have a hosepipe ban in Northern Ireland. Some quite like the novel idea of it coming in, because it would mean that we have had four or five days of sunshine, which is a rarity, but it will become more and more of a thing here. I want clarity on how it could be ensured that it would not affect commercial operators, Minister. I know that it applies to homes, but say that a commercial operator is carrying out work and has to tap into the tap in a home: how would that work? I welcome Mr McNulty to the Committee. He made a point about education, which is critical. We heard from Northern Ireland Water officials when they came to Committee that, invariably, enforcement powers and fines never have to be used because, more often than not, when they come in, people play by the rules. How will awareness of the temporary ban and the ban itself be raised among the public? One often sees that when it comes to planning issues. Under clause 1, article 116B(2) would refer to sharing information on a temporary ban "in at least two newspapers" and on the website. We all know that, sadly, readership of local newspapers is on the slide. If a hosepipe ban comes in on a Monday, the notice about it will probably have been lost in translation by the time that anyone picks up a newspaper on Thursday. There could be a new way to assess how best we can communicate those short-term, punchy notices that we want to get through to the public quickly — social media is probably the obvious one to utilise — but I do not think that specifying "two newspapers" in legislation will work, given their decline. It is good that the notices will be in newspapers, but the Minister could at least acknowledge that we could do something to get the information out to the public at bit more quickly in order to raise awareness. The second element of the Bill is the sustainable drainage systems, or SuDS, regulations. This is where I may start to ramble, Mr Deputy Speaker, so feel free to tell me to shush if needs be. I get that the regulations are intended to make us future-proofed, but I would be interested to know whether the Department and the Minister are looking at other places around the world, which I am sure that they are, where sustainable drainage is being done really effectively in order that we can learn from best practice. That is an important aspect of the Bill. I will not go through whether I agree with each clause, because that has been done, but I will go back to the point on clause 6 that I made earlier. It would be advantageous to have something in statute on support not only for domestic properties but for commercial premises. That would give some security. It would also be helpful if the Minister could comment in her remarks on what the assessment criteria will look like and on the anticipated funding over the years, given that flooding will probably, and sadly, increase as we see more and more turbulent weather. With regard to clause 11, I commented earlier on the difficulties that are associated with cost recovery. I raised that with NI Water officials when they came in. I get that when NI Water has to go in to occupy a site, if the person who owns the land cannot pay the price, the work may get stuck or logjammed because the money cannot be claimed back or because there is a reluctance. I want to get my head around how that works. Will the adoption of the pre-1973 sewerage systems under clause 12 be so cost-prohibitive that Northern Ireland Water might not be in a position to do it, given the fact that we know how big the backlog in road adoption is and that a lot of that is due to sewerage problems? Where will the funding, resource and supports be to ensure that, while Northern Ireland Water has the power to take those systems back on, there is not a massive reluctance to do so, given that it will only add a financial burden, year-on-year, to a network that is already under pressure? I think that that concludes my ramblings for now. I thank the Minister for moving the Bill's Second Stage. I look forward to working with Committee colleagues to take the Bill through the next stage and to table any potential amendments that we may have.

1,850 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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