Have your say: consultation on new water and drainage Bill

As part of the standard legislative process, the NI Assembly has launched a public consultation on the Water, Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Bill, which remains open for responses until Wednesday 3 December 2025.

The Bill in brief

The Bill, tabled by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI), aims to improve processes for NI Water and enable new approaches to water management. Its purpose is to strengthen resilience during extreme weather events such as drought and support more environmentally friendly ways of managing water.

The Bill, as introduced to the Assembly on 23 June 2025, includes the following provisions that could be of interest to architects:

• Regulations that may require in specified circumstances the construction or the use of a Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS).
• Regulations about the design, construction, operation, modification or removal of SuDS.
• Regulations about the entitlement of a person to have a drain or sewer within a SuDS communicate with another SuDS, a public sewer or a watercourse.
• Regulations about the assessment and management by the Department of flood risk.
• Grants by the Department by way of contribution to the costs of measures to protect domestic buildings against flooding.

The full Water, Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Bill can be accessed here.

Have your say

RSUA is preparing a response to this consultation. To share your views, please contact Curtis Large, RSUA Policy and Public Affairs Officer, at curtis@rsua.org.uk