The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, the Welsh Government and the Environment Agency have launched three separate consultations on the Government’s proposals to integrate flood defence consents into the Environmental Permitting regime.

Currently anyone seeking to carry out certain works on or near main rivers or sea defences that might impact on flood risk are required to seek prior consent from the Environment Agency in England and Natural Resources Wales in Wales - known as “flood defence consents.”

With no regulation, activities might block or restrict watercourses or the effective operation of the flood plain, leading to flooding of other property that might not have happened otherwise, or flood defence structures might be damaged with the same effect.

Flood defence consents are needed before people undertake activities in, on, over, under or near watercourses to ensure they do not increase flood risk. Defra said that changing the consents to be part of the risk based environmental permitting framework would allow the introduction of different types of permits. This would reduce the burdens on applicants by allowing quicker and simpler ways of applying for a permit. It will also allow the Environment Agency to focus on the high risk activities.

Activities controlled by flood defence consenting include

• construction of outfalls,
• construction and repair of foot, road or rail bridges,
• works to prevent erosion of river banks and loss of land,
• provision of utility crossings of rivers,
• culverting watercourses for access crossings or to increase available land for some activity unrelated to the watercourse,
• depositing solid material or raising ground levels in the floodplain when not covered by the grant of planning permission.

The UK Government announced in November 2011 that, in order to reduce regulatory burdens on businesses, it intended to further expand the Environmental Permitting framework to cover flood defence consents (as well as water abstraction and impoundment licences and fish pass approvals). Powers to enable the changes to be made were included in the Water Act 2014.

The Environmental Permitting framework seeks to rationalise various permitting and compliance regimes into a common framework that is intended to be easier to understand and simpler to use. A key component is that it allows applicants that would otherwise require several permits for activities falling under various regulations on a single site to complete a single application, and to be issued with one permit.

The Environment Agency is carrying out a separate, though linked consultation on proposals for standard rules that would apply to permits for standard activities in England. There are no standard rules permits proposed for Wales at this time.

Defra, WG and EA are coordinating the consultations in order to give stakeholders a clearer idea of the complete scheme. Click here to access the consultations. Deadline for responses is 17th February 2015.