SUDS Design Guidance

Promoting Sustainable Drainage Systems: Design Guidance for Islington

Promoting Sustainable Drainage Systems (SUDS) in Islington will bring a range of benefits. SUDS manage runoff from development in an integrated way to reduce the quantity of water entering drains and therefore to reduce surface water floodrisk – an important consideration in a dense urban area like Islington, particularly given the increase in heavy rainfall likely as a result of climate change. SUDS also improve the quality of runoff from development, bringing clean water back into use in our urban environment to create attractive places for people and wildlife.

To promote the use of sustainable drainage systems (SUDS) in Islington, the council has produced a detailed SUDS Design Guidance note. This has been produced in collaboration with a range of stakeholders within the Council and its partner organisations in order to identify and raise awareness of opportunities for SUDS and to examine how they could be effectively implemented and managed.

The note is split into two major parts. Section One provides a summary of the rationale for SUDS, basic SUDS principles and outlines design criteria which the Council will apply in developing or regulating SUDS schemes. It also covers adoption and maintenance issues and, together with the frequently asked questions, addresses other commonly perceived barriers to implementing SUDS.

Sections Two to Six focus on the major opportunities for incorporating SUDS within Islington - schools, new developments, existing housing estates, highways and parks. Each chapter is based around an Islington case study scheme which demonstrates how SUDS can be incorporated within that particular context. The chapters also include a number of illustrations of techniques and supporting photographs of where these techniques have been implemented in practice.

The guidance aims to provide information and ideas for decision makers and designers within the Council, developers and partner organisations to support the application of SUDS in a range of contexts across Islington.

You can download the guidance from the downloadable documents links below. The document has been broken into separate pdf chapters to allow faster downloading to your computer.  

There is also a pdf of a complete low resolution version of the document (7MB) at the bottom of the page.