Jonathan Munslow

Hello everyone. Well, I'll say my name again. I'm John Munslow, chair of UK RLG Climate Adaptation subboard, and I'm also a past president of the Local Government Technical Advisors Group. And uh I've been in, uh, predominantly highways for about 30 years managing public realm infrastructure. And I'm gonna talk a little bit today about what is now your number one top priority for asset management, and that's the green infrastructure, green in the black, bringing green infrastructure into our highways and into our public realm to enable us to adapt for our changing climate and the impacts that that climate is bringing for us. So our highways and open spaces are on the front line of climate change impacts. I think we're all seeing and feeling that. So the verges, the trees, the shrubs, the bushes, and all the habitat, it's crucial for our nature recovery. And our parks and our cemeteries and our public rights away, they are all important green. And it's also, that covers the blue infrastructure, the ditches and watercourses that we need to manage er er rain and surface water. If we don't manage them better than we're doing at the moment, we're gonna have to really suffer in our very near future. And our public green infrastructure is crucial to that flood management, and that protects our roads, homes and businesses. It provides space for rain to permeate down through the soil and the rocks into our aquifers, and that refills our water sources. Trees and canopy cover are crucial for heat mitigation, not only for us as humans, but for wildlife and for the food we grow. And trees also shade roads, reducing the impact of summer temperatures on those road surfaces. And the habitat we create through our management, or perhaps sometimes not in the past of verges and green areas is paramount to supporting biodiversity and nature recovery. And to reiterate some of what Tim has said, um. It's, you know, it's not only a few parks and open spaces and roadside verges, roughly 2600 square kilometers of highway verge. That's the size of Dorset, 1.2% of the land area is the size of Dorset, and as a habitat, it reaches every part of the UK. So that's the nature recovery corridors for plants and pollinators. And our public open spaces. I must, oh right, sorry, catch up, John. Public open spaces, 27,000 of them, and that covers a further 1980 square kilometers, which is, that's the size of Warwickshire. So combined 2.1% of the UK land area, two whole counties, that's kind of huge when you picture it. And uh that's a huge, huge asset to have. And on that asset, we got the carbon value of all that green, green uh green infrastructure on on there. So there's not around, I estimate there's around about 94 million trees on verges and open space, and that absorbs about 1.4 million tons of CO2 a year. And while, and also you've got the grass and soil, which often, I hadn't really considered that, but that soaks up about 4 million tons of carbon a year. And whilst they're all doing that, the trees produce enough oxygen for sixth of the UK population. Now that's a huge massive, very valuable asset. And all that space for nature and all the ditches and watercourses, the blue infrastructure. If we manage that better, if we do more now, think what we can achieve in terms of climate adaptation, climate resilience and biodiversity. So what are we adapting for? The climate change is here right now, we all know that, we're all feeling it. That's partly, I suspect what brought you to the room here today. But it's increasing highways flooding. Poorly maintained ditches and watercourses are putting road users in danger from surface water. It's costing local highway authorities in potholes and third party claims and increasing maintenance costs. And the better management of verges, ditches and roadside watercours will help reduce potholes. It will extend the life of rural roads by helping get water off surfaces and out of road constructions. But we're also adapting, we're also adapting for asset degradation. We spent years, particularly within the highways industry, trying to destroy any form of life on most of our highway verges. In my experience, we've only really valued the significant, the out of the ordinary and the rare, and that's good, done a good job of protecting orchids, historic trees, bats and newts, but we haven't valued anything else. So we've try to keep maintenance costs low, so grass is cut to within 1 inch of its life. Trees are decapitated to keep maintenance costs down, hedges are often been taken out in the past, so you don't have to avoid maintaining them, but without that good habitat, we're actually affecting our future food security. So we're adapting not only for climate change, but adapting for the damage that has already been done in the past. So it's quite a challenge. But it's not just those immediate and probably straightforward come to mind benefits, the direct benefits that improve management of our green and blue infrastructure will will give us. It's managing verges to support wildlife will help the recovery of pollinators, and that helps us in our pockets, you know, with the cost of food. And the poor management of habitats contributed to the loss of species and numbers. Bees have been in the headlines, as have pollinators in general, and it's an over 40% decline across all pollinators. And if that loss continues, we will see a very big impact on future food security very soon to the point that I don't think we're gonna be talking about it being a future problem until very soon. And maintaining ditches and water courses and ponds will make roads safer in bad weather. That reduces disruption caused by water sitting on roads and footways from storm. That helps the economy. And doing more than just emptying gullies will reduce surface damage to roads and footways, reducing potholes and making other assets last much longer and need less maintenance. We know that most ditches and watercourses from the highway's perspective are not the highway authorities, they're the landowners. So using legal powers that local authorities have got now is more important than it has ever been in the last 20 years. And we all realize the benefits of green for wellbeing and our mental health in COVID. The NHS now prescribes nature-based interventions and activities to help treat mental and physical health conditions, and that's called green prescribing. And achieving net zero needs a substantial and sustained move to active travel. Did you know that children and parents are more likely to walk or cycle to school or walk or cycle further to get to school, where routes are tree-lined, and our public rights away, particularly in or between communities, has seen an increased level of use and importance for travel, as well as for its traditional nature uses. But how do we realize those benefits? How do we make them happen in a time of local authority or authority funding austerity? Too many long words for me there, isn't it? So and it's through good asset management, and the cornerstone of good asset management is asset information built on good accurate asset data. And we need to treat asset data and information as an asset itself, as without it, you can't make the best decisions or access the support and funding needed to properly maintain and manage your highway verges or any of your green infrastructure. And with the asset information, the assets make the case for you. When I was in a local authority, it felt like a bit of a catch-22. I needed information to be able to make the case, but I didn't have the information. But it's not a catch-22. Use some of the funding you've already got provided within your budget to invest in collecting and collating the data you need and invest in the tools to turn that data into information. And combine it with the risks and benefits, some of which I've already touched on, you've got your case for funding, you've got your case to help make people understand what you need and the benefits that you will realize for communities and the economy. And the tools are there to support through carbon tech suite of asset information management services, and they drive good data and information to support daily maintenance decisions and also investment business cases. But there's also tools like storm chain, and that helps manage the response to major events, so dealing with the impacts of the weather and the storms when you, when they come. And also there's a high and resilience tool and that supports resilience risk impact assessment. And the key is to invest a bit of time and effort now in asset information to support the case for appropriate investment in maintenance and management. And having good information gives you a resource and evidence base to then seek funding from outside your normal routes. So access climate resilience, um. Oh, has that come up? Yeah, sorry, Access climate resilience funding to improve blue infrastructure, access health funding to improve your public rights away, but also access road safety funding to improve verge management. You might not be successful in every business case or the first ones, but you're starting to build the link between what you manage and the outcomes outside of what might be traditionally thought of what you're you're providing by management, your management of that infrastructure. But what does better look like? Let's start with grass. Leave it long where you can for as long as you can. Just the whole of an open space needs to be cut regularly. Cut the minimum that supports its use when it's being used. We have no no mo May, which is great, I've seen that just extend over the years, fantastic. Let's extend it so we have bloom in June. We don't need to go at the end of May or rush out and cut the grass. We don't need to. Why are we doing it? And long grass. Slows the um. Sorry, long grass slows the surface water runoff and provides much better habitat for flora and fauna. On rural verges, long grass strengthened slopes and banks, and that reduces er soil erosion and risk of er landslips. And long grass can help slow or reduce silt wash off. That can be through. Right, sorry. Um, Reduce, yeah, long grass, reduce the silt wash off that comes out of fields through hedges, and that then reduces what goes into and blocks drain road drains and ditches. And I think most, if not all, highway authorities have got wildfowl protective verges, but it's not just protecting the most cherished orchids, things like that, or prettier specimens. We need to do more for all species of plant and bugs that are supporting us and just. Protecting orchids isn't going to protect food security. I keep coming back to food security. It's probably one that we don't directly think of in the day to day, but it is a real big issue for us. And defining and protecting more areas of verge to avoid cutting, to protect it for flora and fauna, that's in a local authority's power. And so we can use that power to do more for plants and pollinators. And information is going to be key to us. It is key now. It's going to be key in the future. Because without the information it's very difficult to put in place asset management strategies that support the outcomes we need to see. And we need to help ourselves ensure that we get a maximum value for the investment that we're putting in now. And with a data-led strategic approach, you will get the financial and service benefits of reduced weather impacts on other assets, and that will reduce the cost of maintaining and managing those assets. And less flooding and or less severe flooding will also reduce very costly call outs and reactive maintenance that occurs particularly on highways after storms, having to go clear up silt on road surfaces, the potholes that form, er, etc. So we don't need, in my view to be using the same specifications for grassed area planting on new transport schemes or development schemes. If we change the specs now, we can improve habitat quality and variability to support nature recovery in the new infrastructure and at the same time, we can be managing much better the existing infrastructure. So if I move on to um trees. They're very much representative in my mind of the nature in the climate crisis narrative. And whilst trees aren't the silver bullet for nature recovery, they can sometimes be presented as in in the media. They are crucial to our future and must be managed as the assets that they are, and I think that's especially important for highways where they've probably been pushed to the side and neglected a little. We need to manage them in a much more proactive way. And we need to think about the different species of tree that we have to help make sure we have resilience in the in the tree stock for the future. But I think most critically as asset owners, we need to know what we've got, where it is, what condition it's in, cos we need to know all that to manage and maintain the trees that we have. And I think again that that then becomes much more critical when we think of some of the diseases that are coming through like ash tree dieback or oak processionary moth. And again, what does managing trees er er better look like? So investing in managing our trees properly with that good good asset management principles will bring substantial benefits to us. And that's reduced night-time temperatures. There's studies that show that a tree canopy is reducing surface temperatures by up between 3 and 5%, and there was a study in Birmingham that proved that. And it improved air quality and carbon sequestration. Another benefit is minimizing water runoff during heavy rainfall. Again, light grass, root systems reduce the runoff and the resultant soil erosion. And studies show that those direct links between trees in streets and increased active travel. But it's not all about us. Animals need shelter too, to protect them from the weather impacts. I used to oversee a community farm in South Gloucestershire, and that taught me just to understand the stress that heat can put on animals. Both wild and farm animals. And if I move to uh blue infrastructure, the ditches and grips, ponds out and outfalls, pipes and soakways, that that's kind of the formal drainage, and it's probably one of the most overlooked and undervalued highways assets. And as we move to more natural water management solutions, ponds, wetlands, open water courses, we need to make sure we maintain it all, the kind of the formal and the um, And the informal, the older the new, the man-made and the natural, and there's increasing intense rainfall puts stress on drainage systems, and we need to rethink how we value and maintain them. And for years I think uh we've neglected, particularly in highways, to manage these crucial assets efficiently and effectively. And that's mainly due to, I think, the lack of funding. And there's a bit of after a few days, the water on the road goes away. But we know that that water is permeating down through the road surface, damaging roads and footway constructions as it does so, creating perfect conditions for potholes to form, and then you've got a whole load of expense that could have been avoided. And what we're seeing now is that water doesn't go away over a few days. In the couple of two previous winters when I was in Cambridgeshire, we saw the water table at the surface across more of the land for more of the time in the winter, and this resulted in pipe systems, ditches, and soakerways. They couldn't flow because even when it rained they were full of water anyway. And I'm sure some people here and particularly in highways have have have have seen and experienced that. So and the intense rainfall that we see in the summers as well is overwhelming systems. So How do we make more of that blue infrastructure? I think we're doing the right thing by designing new drainage systems um for 30% more than we've experienced in the past, and we're designing and building grass swas, rain guards and integrated wetlands into new drainage systems and flood management schemes. And these are all great for flood management and supporting nature, particularly in urban areas. But these are the locations are not where the future adaptation and resilience risks are going to lie because we're building in the resilience by putting them in. The big risk to road safety, to vulnerable road users, to the economy and to our communities is the lack of strategic maintenance and risk management of the existing infrastructure. And within the drainage systems. So as highway authorities, we generally know where all the gullies are. But we don't necessarily know the condition of the pipe systems that connect them all up or the capacity of soakways or the ditches they discharge into, and we don't necessarily maintain the capacity of the ditches and watercourse, of course it's through working with landowners to actually get that water to flow where we need it to flow. And our drainage management in highways has evolved into a reactive approach, and it's a bit of a do minimum reactive approach. And we need to change that if we're going to avoid the ever increasing impacts of uh flooding on our infrastructure. So we can't afford to make the same mistakes in management as we go forward as we have perhaps in the past. And the benefits of investing in line with the importance of the assets is that reduced long-term maintenance costs, reduced flood impact on people and communities, plus cleaner water. And healthier rivers and less potholes and carbon tech has demonstrated. The long term saving of a risk based maintenance approach of your drainage infrastructure and that and key to that is collecting the asset knowledge and then using that asset knowledge, and that benefits your other assets through the reduced deterioration and it improves things for business and local communities. So I've focused on just a couple of areas of key nature assets and their importance in climate adaptation and resilience and focused quite a lot on our highways. And during COVID we saw a sustained increase in understanding the importance of nature and green infrastructure, particularly within the public. Green infrastructure is much higher up the priorities for local and national investment, as Tim has already sold us, and that's key for you gaining support and funding for the improved management of that infrastructure. The evidence of the value of that investment is there and very clear to us all now. And what is needed is a strategic outcomes driven asset management that focuses on the value of that good maintenance and management, not the lowest level of maintenance, which is where we've kind of been driven by the past funding within within highways and across local authorities. And it all starts with the collection and use of good quality, relevant asset data. But where do you start, where would I start? What's needed first? It's understanding what I have, where it is, what conditioning, what's affected it, and what the risks and the and the impacts of those risks are and where. So enhancing asset data and information. And what condition do I need it to be in and why? What are the asset resilience and community benefits I want to see and understand what is needed to improve that resilience, particularly against the weather. Cos you then have the knowledge to do more with the resources you have to have better outcomes from the maintenance you can afford to do now. And I'm sure many of you within, particularly within highways, have, have seen the uh effort, detail and size of asset management plans for carriageways and structures. Now we don't necessarily need all that depth of data. But what we don't, but what we do need is to develop green infrastructure asset management plans along the same lines that set out the outcomes needed, how to achieve them, and the revenue and capital investment that's needed. And all your green infrastructure is, is relevant for local authority capital investment. It's just showing the outcomes and the benefits that you get from a broader perspective than just the the very close uh perhaps um benefits you get from having a healthier tree. Now, Collaboration, Tim mentioned it, will help move us forward faster and we can learn much better together, sharing thoughts and ideas, which is what we're doing here today. And those examples are on screen, they're projects that I've been involved with, or I've seen or I've heard about from others, and then been able to use what I've learnt there elsewhere. And a quick search will find everything you need to draft a strategic case for investing more in green infrastructure, and the asset information asset management tools will provide the knowledge to make the financial, economic return on investment case to get support for funding that you need. And there is um Leadership across the sector that's developing what is needed to support the change we need to drive us forward. UKRLG Group now has the ABC board Adaptation, Biodiversity and Climate Resilience Board, and we've got the chair of that board, John Lamb here with us today. And the adaptation is a sub board that is looking at changing what we do and how we do it. Biodiversity is a board specifically recovering nature, and climate resilience is mitigating those weather impacts that we're experiencing now. So the ABC, our climate crisis priorities, and managing our green infrastructure and blue infrastructure is a top priority for achieving all three. Now I hope I've made some some relevant points there, so thank you very much for listening. Thank you.