Environment Agency - Urban Demonstrators - Water Resilient Cities building resilience

Tender description

This is a programme to increase the implementation of SuDS across the UK, providing effective flood risk mitigation by developing collaborative solutions to shared challenges. The additional benefits for water quality, air quality, biodiversity and making our cities better places to live and work could also be substantial. This work forms phase II of a project and will address the outstanding questions of the feasibility study and enable other partners to fund a full pilot of the SuDS approach starting in Manchester. As Greater Manchester has been identified as the urban focus for the DEFRA Pioneers programme, this work will support the pioneer as part of a wider environmental programme. Phase 1 of this work was funded by Defra and led to the production of the Business in the Community (BITC) report on Water Resilient Cities attested the business case for sustainable urban drainage (SuDS) at non domestic sites. Copies of the report are available on request. The study highlighted the opportunity for SuDS to reduce the surface water charges for schools and other non-domestic customers, with the potential for a reasonable payback within 3-5 years. Such interventions would deliver benefits in terms of cost reduction to schools but also wider environmental benefits at a local and national level. This fixed term contract would be to: • Map the Greater Manchester schools by: drainage charge band, proximity to band thresholds and their potential annual savings - to assist with targeting and planning of GM wide strategy • Create a better understanding of the multiple benefits for multiple stakeholders and build a case for collaborative action at a programme level, in particular looking at the benefits of natural capital to support the urban pioneer. • Develop and cost models for ongoing management of SuDS technologies. • Investigate the potential for applying the model to other public sector real estate and businesses. • Consult with school's management groups and LAs to understand their current financial context, the decisions, barriers and constraints that govern their decisions on invest-to-save projects such as SUDS. • Convene key stakeholders including developers, financial institutions, Local Authorities and utilities to understand the drivers and blockages for creating an enabling environment for SuDS. • Disseminate the findings through the CaBA urban group and Defra's Local Action Project Work would start in January and be completed by the end of March 2017.