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In academic and professional circles, ‘resilience thinking’ has emerged as the dominant paradigm in flood risk management, which emphasizes the need to plan and design cities that can absorb water and replicate natural processes more closely. In this paper, we explore how planners in England are expected to respond to the resilience agenda against the realities in practice, zoning in on the delivery of sustainable (urban) drainage systems (SuDS). Our exploration highlights that, while SuDS are being implemented, they are largely characterized by a ‘bog standard’ design. We found that there are three main institutional factors that are constraining the implementation of SuDS: the lack of legislative backing, the power afforded to private commercial interests in the neoliberalized planning process, compounded by the severe lack of resources in local authorities. What is missing at the moment is SuDS process and design that is flexible, integrated, collaborative and innovative. There are clear implications that, without the necessary institutional support, resilience thinking will remain largely aspirational, and professionals will struggle to gain traction and translate the larger flood resilience policy agenda into England's future climate-resilient places.

Following a series of flood events, the major flooding of 2007 finally triggered legislative change through the Flood and Water Management Act of 2010 and proposed the introduction of Schedule 3 (S3), to provide a stronger regulatory system for the implementation of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS). However, S3 has been abandoned in England in favour of implementing SuDS through a “strengthened” planning system. By taking a broader governance perspective, this article explores the limited uptake of SuDS through the strengthened planning system. We argue that the so‐called strengthening of the planning system creates an institutional void: a lack of policy clarity that occurs when the role of the state is scaled back and other actors take up governance roles. While institutional voids can create successful outcomes, in the case of SuDS implementation they have been sub‐optimal. We trace the cause of these outcomes to the unwillingness of the Government to engage in designing policy. This creates a lack of consistency and uniformity, as the implementation of SuDS becomes a matter of ad hoc negotiations and power relations between local authorities and developers. We conclude that the current policy has reduced potential to deliver better outcomes and highlight the options for increased SuDS uptake going forward.

Achieving urban flood resilience (UFR) at local, regional and national levels requires a transformative change in planning, design and implementation of urban water systems. Flood risk, wastewater and stormwater management should be re-envisaged and transformed to: ensure satisfactory service delivery under flood, normal and drought conditions, and enhance and extend the useful lives of ageing grey assets by supplementing them with multi-functional Blue-Green infrastructure. The aim of the multidisciplinary UFR research project, which launched in 2016 and comprises academics from nine UK institutions, is to investigate how transformative change may be possible through a whole systems approach. UFR research outputs to date are summarised under three themes. Theme 1 investigates how Blue-Green and Grey (BG + G) systems can be co-optimised to offer maximum flood risk reduction, continuous service delivery and multiple co-benefits. Theme 2 investigates the resource capacity of urban stormwater and evaluates the potential for interoperability. Theme 3 focuses on the interfaces between planners, developers, engineers and beneficiary communities and investigates citizens’ interactions with BG + G infrastructure. Focussing on retrofit and new build case studies, UFR research demonstrates how UFR may be achieved through changes in planning, practice and policy to enable widespread uptake of BG + G infrastructure.

Resilience has become a fashionable concept in UK policy-making in the last years. Many commentators have interpreted resilience as a neoliberal strategy that seeks to responsibilise individuals in anticipation of the retreat of centralised forms of risk management and protection. However, the haste with which the concept has been adopted also means that little attention has been paid to how resilience works in practice. This article analyses the implementation of a resilience initiative designed to build community resilience to flooding in the UK. It argues that the implementation of the policy is enabled by a long governmental chain of responsibilisation comprising several linkages that are also endangered by potential failure points where political contestations play out. It concludes that looking for what resilience ‘does’ requires investigating the implementation of specific resilience policies and the degree to which they are successful.

Resilience has become a fashionable concept in UK policy-making in the last years. Many commentators have interpreted resilience as a neoliberal strategy that seeks to responsibilise individuals in anticipation of the retreat of centralised forms of risk management and protection. However, the haste with which the concept has been adopted also means that little attention has been paid to how resilience works in practice. This article analyses the implementation of a resilience initiative designed to build community resilience to flooding in the UK. It argues that the implementation of the policy is enabled by a long governmental chain of responsibilisation comprising several linkages that are also endangered by potential failure points where political contestations play out. It concludes that looking for what resilience ‘does’ requires investigating the implementation of specific resilience policies and the degree to which they are successful.

Following a series of flood events, the major flooding of 2007 finally triggered legislative change through the Flood and Water Management Act of 2010 and proposed the introduction of Schedule 3 (S3), to provide a stronger regulatory system for the implementation of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS). However, S3 has been abandoned in England in favour of implementing SuDS through a “strengthened” planning system. By taking a broader governance perspective, this article explores the limited uptake of SuDS through the strengthened planning system. We argue that the so‐called strengthening of the planning system creates an institutional void: a lack of policy clarity that occurs when the role of the state is scaled back and other actors take up governance roles. While institutional voids can create successful outcomes, in the case of SuDS implementation they have been sub‐optimal. We trace the cause of these outcomes to the unwillingness of the Government to engage in designing policy. This creates a lack of consistency and uniformity, as the implementation of SuDS becomes a matter of ad hoc negotiations and power relations between local authorities and developers. We conclude that the current policy has reduced potential to deliver better outcomes and highlight the options for increased SuDS uptake going forward.

In academic and professional circles, ‘resilience thinking’ has emerged as the dominant paradigm in flood risk management, which emphasizes the need to plan and design cities that can absorb water and replicate natural processes more closely. In this paper, we explore how planners in England are expected to respond to the resilience agenda against the realities in practice, zoning in on the delivery of sustainable (urban) drainage systems (SuDS). Our exploration highlights that, while SuDS are being implemented, they are largely characterized by a ‘bog standard’ design. We found that there are three main institutional factors that are constraining the implementation of SuDS: the lack of legislative backing, the power afforded to private commercial interests in the neoliberalized planning process, compounded by the severe lack of resources in local authorities. What is missing at the moment is SuDS process and design that is flexible, integrated, collaborative and innovative. There are clear implications that, without the necessary institutional support, resilience thinking will remain largely aspirational, and professionals will struggle to gain traction and translate the larger flood resilience policy agenda into England's future climate-resilient places.

Achieving urban flood resilience (UFR) at local, regional and national levels requires a transformative change in planning, design and implementation of urban water systems. Flood risk, wastewater and stormwater management should be re-envisaged and transformed to: ensure satisfactory service delivery under flood, normal and drought conditions, and enhance and extend the useful lives of ageing grey assets by supplementing them with multi-functional Blue-Green infrastructure. The aim of the multidisciplinary UFR research project, which launched in 2016 and comprises academics from nine UK institutions, is to investigate how transformative change may be possible through a whole systems approach. UFR research outputs to date are summarised under three themes. Theme 1 investigates how Blue-Green and Grey (BG + G) systems can be co-optimised to offer maximum flood risk reduction, continuous service delivery and multiple co-benefits. Theme 2 investigates the resource capacity of urban stormwater and evaluates the potential for interoperability. Theme 3 focuses on the interfaces between planners, developers, engineers and beneficiary communities and investigates citizens’ interactions with BG + G infrastructure. Focussing on retrofit and new build case studies, UFR research demonstrates how UFR may be achieved through changes in planning, practice and policy to enable widespread uptake of BG + G infrastructure.