For too long, the UK’s approach to water management has been reactive and fragmented. Proactive planning is required to deal with our changing climate, writes Paul Curtis
With Storms Goretti and Chandra saturating the British landscape in quick succession, the beginning of 2026 served as a sobering reminder that “unprecedented” weather is our new baseline.
While the record levels of investment coming down the track in the form of the PR24 and AMP8 commitments are a welcome catalyst, money alone will not keep our feet dry.
Instead, we need a fundamental revolution in how the UK conceives, designs, and implements flood mitigation.
Our legacy networks were never built for this intensity of rainfall and continuing to rely on rapid discharge only serves to move the crisis from one doorstep to the next
For too long, the UK’s approach to water management has been reactive and fragmented, a landscape of disparate products rather than a coordinated national strategy.
The sheer scale and velocity of modern climate shifts mean that our historical reliance on simply whisking water away into sewers as fast as possible is fundamentally broken – our legacy networks were never built for this intensity of rainfall and continuing to rely on rapid discharge only serves to move the crisis from one doorstep to the next.
To truly protect our communities, we must shift toward a more proactive, long-term philosophy that weaves durability and environmental stewardship into our infrastructure from the very first sketch on a drawing board.
This means moving beyond a product-focused mindset and embracing systemic solutions, not simply solving one problem by creating another.
For example, installing a traditional “hard” flood barrier may protect a specific business park, but if it simply shunts high-velocity run-off downstream to a vulnerable village, that is not a solution, it’s a transfer of risk.
Similarly, an over-reliance on impermeable “grey” infrastructure ignores the vital role of nature in regulating the water cycle.
PR24 and AMP8 will see over £100bn in network investment, presenting a generational opportunity. However, there is also a significant delivery risk for the construction sector.
For the contractors and consultants tasked with upgrading sewerage and stormwater infrastructure, the challenge is not just the volume of work, but the complexity of integrating Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) into increasingly constrained brownfield environments.
When a project relies on a patchwork of disparate components from multiple vendors, the risk of interface failure increases exponentially. These failures lead to on-site delays, costly design variations and long-term liability issues.
By contrast, a systems-led approach, where the surface drainage, attenuation, and filtration are engineered as a single, verified unit, de-risks the build phase.
It ensures that compliance with evolving environmental standards is baked into the specification, preventing the “compliance creep” that can erode profitability between the tender stage and final handover.
Only by integrating systems that mimic natural cycles, combining high-performance linear drainage with nature-based solutions like rain gardens and biofiltration, can we slow the flow of water at the source and reduce the burden on our Victorian-era sewer networks.
This isn’t just about selling a kerb or a tank; it’s about creating a landscape that breathes and absorbs.
Furthermore, the “land-take” associated with traditional flood management often puts water at odds with a developer’s bottom line. In high-density urban developments, every square metre lost to a standalone attenuation pond is a square metre that isn’t generating a return.
By adopting integrated systems which combine high-capacity linear drainage with subterranean storage, we can maximise the developable area of a site.
This “engineering-first” approach to SuDS provides a dual benefit: it satisfies the stringent requirements of the lead local flood authorities while protecting the commercial viability of the scheme.
The water management industry may be about to receive a £100bn injection but we urgently need a framework where every pound spent contributes to a larger, more resilient whole.
This review must mandate catchment-based planning – in my experience, water does not respect local authority boundaries…
We must move towards a model where every piece of infrastructure is designed with long-term survival and ecological balance as its starting point
We also need regional partnerships with statutory duties to manage water from the hilltop to the high street, ensuring that upstream interventions benefit downstream neighbours.
As we look toward the ambitious housing targets the UK aims to meet, we have a choice: continue with the piecemeal interventions of the past or pioneer a systems-led approach that turns our towns into resilient “sponges”.
Proactive planning ensures that new developments are not just compliant with today’s regulations but are future-proofed against the climate of 2050 and beyond.
Ultimately, effective flood mitigation is not a luxury, it is the foundation of economic growth and community safety. We must move towards a model where every piece of infrastructure is designed with long-term survival and ecological balance as its starting point.
In the AMP8 era, resilience won’t just be about how much water a system can hold, it will be about how effectively that system was de-risked from the moment it left the drawing board.
It is time our national strategy reflected the urgency of the environment we now inhabit.
Paul Curtis is managing director at Marshalls Water Management
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