I very much support what has been said about adaptation and drainage because of the flooding situation. I shall mention one incident to my noble friend on the Front Bench because it goes to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. At a development in Sherborne in Dorset—the development is now nine years old, so it was built after 2009—there have been considerable flooding problems from surface water, which raises the question: why did the local authority not insist on a better scheme to begin with? All the home owners have now had to pay more into the annual service charge to remedy the defect. The developer obviously put in the minimum amount of drainage that it thought it could get away with, which indeed it did, but now it is up to the home owners to meet the bill. It is so much easier to mitigate something right at the start than after a development has been completed.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh is right that we fought this hard on the Environment Bill when it was going through the House. I hope my noble friend the Minister will be enthusiastic in her support for my noble friend’s amendment so that we get better control over drainage. Will she please confirm that she is checking that local authorities are scrutinising developers’ plans properly now and making allowances for the increase in sudden heavy downpours, which was not necessarily the case 15 years ago when these developments were being promoted?