At Stormwater Shepherds UK we try not to travel too much for work, to keep our Carbon footprint down. But towards the end of March, we had to travel down to Hampshire and West Sussex for a couple of important meetings so our Director of Operations, Jo Bradley, took the opportunity to visit some large SuDS schemes on residential developments to see how they are coming along.
The Berewood development near Waterlooville is often held up as a good example of hybrid SuDS as the attenuation tanks for flood risk management are hidden under a beautiful wet habitat for wildlife. Jo was delighted to see that the habitat had been allowed to mature without too much ‘tidying’ and that it has created an excellent habitat for small birds and insects at the front of the development. You can see a photo of it at the bottom of this page. There are extensive swales around the road sides too and they were looking good. But best of all, there is a large nature reserve around the periphery of the site and, although the trees and plants are not established yet, this was looking fabulous.
The SuDS on this site aren’t perfect – there were a couple of examples of runoff short-circuiting and not receiving all the treatment that it should – but it really didn’t matter. There were second and third levels of treatment for all the runoff anyway so the water environment was well protected, and the extent of the habitat for wildlife was stunning. It just shows what can be done when a good client and a good design firm work together to do the best that they can.
The second site that Jo visited was still being built and some of the SuDS were very new and raw. But they were extensive and there was a wide array of SuDS devices all interconnected to deliver the four ‘pillars of SuDS’ together. It was inspiring to see such god SuDS and hopefully by using these examples in presentations and CPD sessions, Stormwater Shepherds can continue to advocate for the delivery of the best SuDS possible. Do you have any SuDS in your local area? Go and have a look around and see if you can work out how they function and then see if they work when it is raining hard. You can share photos and videos and tag Stormwater Shepherds too!
