Amenity

There is increasing pressure on planners and developers to deliver green infrastructure, with many local authorities developing green infrastructure plans and strategies. SuDS can improve a development by creating habitats that encourage biodiversity and simultaneously provide open space.

SuDS components (like ponds and wetlands) provide an array of amenity, recreational and biodiversity benefits. However, they will only fulfil their amenity potential if their design criteria considers amenity, flood risk and water quality management together. Biodiversity often has an important role in delivering good amenity.

SuDS provide opportunities to create visually attractive green (vegetated and landscaped) and blue (water) corridors in developments connecting people to water. This in turn can improve the well-being of people that live or work in, or visit or pass through, the area, as the benefit pathway diagram below shows.Amenity benefits can be delivered in new build, retrofit or redevelopment situations and often relate to the pleasure derived from or the usefulness of components provided.

• Benefits of SuDS
• Flood risk management
• Water quality management
• Biodiversity & ecology
• Air quality
• Building temperature
• Carbon reduction & sequestration
• Crime
• Economic growth
• Education
• Enabling development
• Flexible infrastructure/climate change adaptation
• Groundwater recharge
• Health & wellbeing
• Pumping wastewater
• Rainwater harvesting
• Recreation
• Tourism
• Traffic calming
• Treating wastewater
• SuDS performance and monitoring