Households that pave over their gardens to build driveways should face extra charges because they contribute to urban flooding, a report commissioned by Sadiq Khan has suggested.
The London Climate Resilience Review has warned that paved gardens “pose a lethal risk to Londoners” by increasing surface water flooding.
It recommends that the Government consider introducing stormwater charges based on the amount of non-porous paved surface in a garden.
Mr Khan, the London Mayor, said he would work with the Labour Government to take forward the recommendations in the report.
Porous surfacing that allows rainwater to drain away has decreased by nearly 10 per cent across London since 2001, as more households choose to pave over their gardens to create driveways.
So, they’re charging you to park in hte street now. And also, more and more it’s necessary to have somewhere to charge the car. So, of course, they then want to tax the result of their own policies. Obviously.
Everything else is just an excuse.
An interesting question woulfd be, well, OK, so extra stormwater to deal with., The cost of that is? And so the tax should be? And then, finally, what will the cost of the tax assessment and collection system be?
People will just use porous paving. This won’t raise any revenue.
I did back of the envelope arithmetic on this once based on the CO2 captured by low quality grassland and based on £100/tonne reckoned it was 25p per sq.m, so about £4 a year then if you pave over around 16sq.m.
Could put that into prices by adding it to the price of tarmacadam.
Is there a grass technology you can park a car on yet, doesn’t turn muddy, and which looks neat?
It will be another Khan scam to hit outer London where he knows people don’t vote for him. Most houses have already paved over their small front gardens I’d bet it’s pretty much a non issue.
So we won’t be concreting over places to build blocks of rabbit hutches any more then?
Don’t know why we have to be part of his empire. We just pay surcharges on council tax bills and get nothing for them.
So people will pave over the garden to park and use porous surfacing.
Is there a way to tell the difference between porous and non-porous just by looking at it?
Or they could just use gravel, which personally I hate as it’s noisy and looks shit, but it’s cheap and let’s water drain through.
Part H of the Building Regulations covers the requirements for drainage and waste disposal and came into effect in 2002. For new driveways “SuDs” compliance is mandated. That means they have to be permeable rather that discharging onto a public highway.
However driveway contractors (you know the type) are sometimes know to cheat and either not connect up the drainage or tap in into a foul sewer drain.
Clearly designed to undermine the earnings potential of good honest hard-working travelling folk.
WAYCIST!!!!!!!
A major contributor to surface flooding in London is councils failing to keep road drains clear of debris.
It would be interesting to determine how many money making schemes the poisonous dwarf has implemented. I came across one in North London many years ago, where a large company appointed a Paskistani as an accountant in their accounts department.
When I went back the next year, he’d been made chief accountant and there were half a dozen Pakistanis in the accounts department. The final year I went, the entire accounts department, which now numbered 20 staff-up from 8 in year one-were Pakistanis. At the end of one evening, after a boozy session with a very naughty accounts clerk, I was told that the chief accountant received a signing on fee from every new recruit of £100 in cash followed by a weekly gift depending on the recruit’s salary.
I thought of this client when I read years ago at the increase in the number of employees at City Hall…
As NoelC points out, blocked roadside drains are a major contributor to the flooding we’ve had recently, because they no longer unclog them during autumn.
What sort of ‘a lethal risk’, anyway? The only report mentioning death from flooding refers to a couple who died in Liverpool, not London.
Is there a grass technology you can park a car on yet, doesn’t turn muddy, and which looks neat?
Yeah, there is. Plastic interlocking panels with a grid pattern. But you do need a flat compacted area, your car won’t sink into in the dry. Put down a thin layer of fine gravel or granite chips over the existing grass mown very short & raked & level it.. Now put down the panel. Then spread topsoil with grass seed mixed in so it fills the grid. Washing it in during the process helps. Now you can use it. Eventually the grass grows through it & you can treat it as a normal lawn. The grass actually ties the whole thing together so it gets more durable the longer its down. You wouldn’t know the plastic was there. Don’t try it in an area that’s extensively excavated & refilled unless you get in a tamper to stabilise it. Or the ground will sink & the panels tilt. Price works out similar to putting a decent 4-6″ concrete pad down.
I believe the system’s used to make sports fields durable but you may be able to buy it at your local brico.
The solution would be to put a ‘French drain’ by the side of the driveway – a gentle slope so the water flows into the drain.
A French drain is a shallow trench filled with three graded layers of pebbles, larger at the bottom, smaller middle layer and shingle on top – draining into a soak away. Cost should be minimal.
I can imagine there is a problem in UK cities. East London street where I owned a house. Pretty well all the front gardens had been paved or concreted over. Mostly by the people Grist mentioned & no doubt Khan is a cousin of.* None had drainage. Just a fall to the pavement. Heavy rain the whole road was awash. The sewers were getting 3 or 4 times the runoff they were designed for because most of them had just dropped the roof gutter down pipes straight onto the concrete.
*And it’s notable how lightly they’re treated for regulatory compliance, planning consents, building regulations, health & safety compliance etc etc etc etc. Making local authorities family bushinesses is a novel way of local government.
@John B
French drains will take mild precipitation. But they won’t take downpours. Not unless they’re about a metre wide. They fill up faster than they can drain.
What Martin Says.
I’ve thought for some time that the Mayor should probably cover everything inside the North/South Circular. What’s outside of that is different. His job is 99.9% about transport, anyway.
The London Climate Resilience Review has warned that paved gardens “pose a lethal risk to Londoners”
Good.
It will be another Khan scam to hit outer London where he knows people don’t vote for him.
I think you’re a bit behind the times there, WB. The colonisation of Outer London’s been going on for years. Ilford North is outside the 406. Wes Streeting(Lab) only just squeaked home against a muslim candidate. And as Grist says, local government itself has been heavily colonised. You still have odd patches of white man territory. But the whole of it’s rapidly going black/asian. Eventually there’ll be a good argument for it becoming an independent national republic with a seat at the UN. With maybe just the centre administered like occupied Berlin with a tripartite power system. Don’t know they’ll put the runway for the Airlifts though. Pave over part of Hyde Park?
Just a thought. When I was a kid in the 50s, Ilford North was “Little Israel”. Haven’t times changed?
And another one. I quite enjoyed living in Bayswater. Convenient for the nightlife of course. But it was “international”. One rarely saw any English. But it was a very mixed community from all over the world. Middle East, Far East, Thai & Japan, S. Americans & the odd Yank. Russians & various other Europeans. Blacks were the extended families of African wealthy. I like that sort of place. Rest of London’s becoming a patchwork of racial ghettos. If there’s a frontier it runs along the River then hooks up Holland Avenue to the Westway & the Euston Road. Anything outside that’s Injun country, requires heavily armed expeditions.
BIS,
I’m just looking at it from a transport point of view, which is really the only power that the Mayor has. Like he can say this should be done, but he can’t do it. He doesn’t have any power.
Ethnically, I agree. I was even surprised at how much an office in Reading had changed in a decade. Went from mostly white to something like 30+% ethnic.
a) this would be part of your water&sewerage bill, not a tax, and b) isn’t it *already* part of your sewerage bill? I’m sure it is part of mine.
I think it’s gone past saving, WB. The governance of the city will be in the hands of the most numerous ethnicity & for its benefit. Probably the best thing to do would to surround it with razor wire & mine fields so nothing goes in & most particularly nothing comes out. Eventually people would be saying “London? What’s a London? A disease?”
Very OT: I’ve been working through Neal Stephenson Baroque Cycle. Which I’d before been presuming was just another historical novel series & avoiding. It is remarkably good. It’s slightly alternative history agrees very closely to the real one. It’s set around the end of the C17th. Charles’ head coming off to German kings. And if you’re a Londoner it gives one the idea of why London is as it is. Because it’s the period when London’s component parts become one. And London’s relationship to the Continent & the rest of the world. A friend comes from a Huguenot family became established in London in that period. It’s the period when English commerce starts dominating the world. Which was a remarkable innovation.* The creation of wealth out of wealth itself. The role reliable money plays in an economy. I do recommend it.
*Or one we stole from the Dutch.
“Because they no longer unclog them during autumn”
Round here they sent the drain & gulley emptier out, then a week later the road sweeper turned up and pushed most of the decaying leaves back into the drains…
BiS: ‘Escape from London’ starring Kurt Russell’s grandson?
Chernyy: Gravel is definitely shit – it moves around far too much. Recently we parked on a gravelled car park and the potholes were small lakes. Porous paving bricks work well. We’ve had them for many years, laid on sand. The rain soaks in in all but the heaviest downpour. The only drawback is the ants build nests in the sand and bring it up as the nest grows bigger.
BIS,
“Probably the best thing to do would to surround it with razor wire & mine fields so nothing goes in & most particularly nothing comes out.”
I could live with that. I’d miss the odd trip to the Royal Opera House but it’s mostly an overpriced, dysfunctional museum/shithole. Great if you have a fetish for giant clock towers and royal cosplay, but I’d rather go meet someone about business in Reading or Milton Keynes.
We have to pay Khan’s mob £400 a year for “services” including policing. There’s no police station in our town because he closed it down.
Clearly the trend is only going one way. I’ve been watching the decline and I’ll be moving somewhere nicer at some point, plans are being considered.
If you try to drive, I’ll tax the street, if you try to walk I’ll tax your feet . . .
The London Climate Resilience Review has warned that paved gardens “pose a lethal risk to Londoners” by increasing surface water flooding.
The worst kind of flooding is flash flooding and this occurs after long periods of hot dry weather when the ground is rock hard and we get the inevitable summer downpour. Its made worse by the constant hosepipe bans that means people couldn’t keep their lawns and drives moist and able to at least absorb some of the downpour.
For everything else keep the drains and sewers clear.
The report was *commissioned by Sadiq Khan*
That tells us how far we can trust it.
@ Bongo There was one forty years ago consisting of a pattern of hard rubber lines and circles made from recycled tyres that one set into the grass at the edge of a sports field and would support the weight of a parked car while grass continued to grow in the gaps. So teachers and parents could park without wrecking the field. I don’t know what has happened to it since.
As a resident of Bradford, the main culprits of destroying front gardens/illegally parking on grass verges to park 4 Audi’s for a 3 bedroom semi???
Thank you John77 and BiS: so the technology is available.
Although one of the funniest occasions of my life was the grass car park at the races when the heavens opened after the 4th. After the last the wheel spinning Mercs flicking clods at the Bentleys was a sight for the ages.
Ritchie doesn’t have a green car space in front of his end terrace according to satellite view, so no climate emergency in Ely then.