Surface water management planning: guidance (2013)

7 Prioritising, funding and implementing measures

The outcome of the appraisal process should be an agreed set of feasible and sustainable measures to manage the risk of surface water flooding in an area.

As previously stated the identification of measures should not be constrained funding concerns or delivery mechanisms. Once the most sustainable measures have been identified the SWMP partnerships should determine who is responsible for implementing the most sustainable measures and how they will be funded.

The SWMP partnerships should prioritise what measures can be implemented in the current FRM planning cycle, who will fund the measures and when they will be implemented.

Funding routes for measures to address surface water flooding include:

• Local authority funding
• Scottish Water funding
• Scottish Government funding
• Private funding (e.g. developer contributions)

The Ministerial Guidance on SFM states:

• " SEPA and the responsible authorities must work across traditional institutional boundaries to deliver an integrated approach to flood risk management. This will require adoption of partnership working at all levels of flood management from national strategic partnerships through to local / operational partnerships that deliver co-ordinated actions on the ground."
• " Fair and practical ways to share costs and responsibilities for the whole drainage system should be identified."
• " as a minimum, all resource commitments must be aligned. However, in many instances joint funding commitments or pooling of resources may be necessary. For instance between local authorities working to deliver co-ordinated actions across a catchment or between local authorities and Scottish Water when coordinating their work to deliver integrated urban drainage"

The Ministerial Guidance on SFM provides examples of joint funding arrangements (see Section 3 Table 4).

Updating SMART Objectives

The final stage in the appraisal process for SWMPs, is to update and finalise the objectives. This will involve using the information generated through the appraisal of the measures short-list, together with the prioritisation of those measures to SMARTen the objectives. Information on how effective the preferred measures are at managing the identified flood risk, together with the high-level timetable for implementation should be included in the final SMART objectives.

The final SMART objectives will be based on a robust appraisal process that has examined what is practical, feasible and affordable for the main surface water flood risks identified within each area. They will provide a joint vision for the SWMP partnerships, as well as informing communities and other stakeholders about the actions being taken to manage flooding in each area.