In the list of Britain’s most popular pasttimes, talking about the weather and finding excuses not to build new homes must come pretty near the top. The latest of a long line of planning absurdities combines the two - we’re now being asked to design homes around puddles.

“Surface water flood risk,” as puddles are called in planning policy, has always existed but never used to be a problem. There was a good reason for that - new developments were already required to include sophisticated surface water drainage schemes to take account of the expansion of impermeable areas that typically results from new development.