Sewers for Scotland and SUDS

Scottish Water has redrafted its Technical Manual 'Sewers For Scotland’ to include a new Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) section.

Over the last few years there has been a shift in the approach to dealing with surface water drainage and a greater use of Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS).

In Scotland, as part of the enabling legislation relating to the Water Framework Directive, the term 'sewer' was redefined to include SUDS components. Through this, Scottish Water (SW) was made responsible for the future maintenance and capital replacement of shared public SUDS through the enactment of Stage 3 of the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Act 2003. (WEWS).

In order to help identify future funding requirements and to gain a greater understanding into the implementation and long-term operation of SUD systems, the water industry used the results of the latest research in the field of sustainable urban drainage to assess costs and performance of SUDS.

The research highlighted those SUD systems where the long term operational costs and performance have been proven. These are outlined below:

The 2nd edition of manual has undergone a public consultation exercise which ran in conjunction with the Scottish Government consultation: “Water, Sewerage and Drainage Infrastructure: Construction Standards and Vesting Conditions”.

The design and construction standards for these systems have been included in the second edition of SW’s Technical manual ‘Sewers For Scotland’, which has now been redrafted. SW will take over public SUDS that are designed to the specifications outlined in the manual.