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Flood-Proofing Redhill & Meadvale: Why We Need to Become a “Sponge Town”

We have all seen it. A heavy storm hits and within minutes, the gutters are overflowing, puddles are forming across pavements, and the drains simply can’t cope. As climate change brings more frequent and intense storms, this problem is only going to get worse.

For decades, the default response has been to bury the problem: bigger concrete pipes and bigger sewers. But there is a smarter, cheaper, and greener way to handle the rain — and it also makes our streets nicer places to live.

As your Green Party candidate for Redhill West & Meadvale, I am campaigning for a shift to Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS). It’s time to turn our “grey” streets into “green” sponges.

The problem: paving over nature

Modern towns are full of hard surfaces: roofs, driveways, roads, patios and paving. These seal off the soil. When it rains, water has nowhere to go but into drains and sewers — and when those systems are overwhelmed, we get flash flooding and polluted runoff entering local waterways.

The solution: rain gardens, not drains

SuDS work by mimicking nature. Instead of rushing water into a pipe as quickly as possible, we design streets and developments to slow it down, soak it up, filter it, and release it gradually.

One of the most effective tools for streets like ours is the rain garden.

A rain garden looks like a normal planted bed at the roadside, but beneath the surface it’s an engineered system. It captures runoff from the street, filters out oil and pollution through soil and planting, and allows water to soak into the ground (or discharge slowly into the drainage network). The result is less water hitting the sewers all at once — and far fewer “oh no” moments when a storm arrives.

The “grey to green” approach

This isn’t unproven. Cities have shown what’s possible when you stop treating rainwater as waste and start treating it as part of a living street. Sheffield’s “Grey to Green” project is one example of replacing hard surfaces with planting and SuDS features that manage rainwater while improving the look and feel of streets.

The benefits for Redhill West & Meadvale are (at least) three-fold:

• Flood resilience: by catching water where it falls, we reduce the surge into sewers further down the line.
• Biodiversity boost: rain gardens can be planted with hardy, pollinator-friendly plants that support bees, butterflies and birds.
• Cooler, nicer streets: planting helps reduce summer heat and makes streets more pleasant to walk along.

My pledge for Redhill West

We can’t keep building 20th-century infrastructure for 21st-century weather. If elected, I will push for a “SuDS First” approach in Reigate & Banstead, so that managing rainwater naturally becomes the default — not an afterthought.

1. New developments: new housing and commercial builds should be expected to handle rainwater on-site using green methods, rather than simply sending it straight into already-stressed drains and sewers.
2. Street renewal: when roads in Redhill West & Meadvale are dug up for maintenance or improvement, we should treat that as an opportunity to add rain gardens, tree pits, and other SuDS features — not just replace tarmac like-for-like.

Let’s stop fighting the water — and start working with nature.