The problem is that if all of the area is concreted over then too little of the rain soaks into the ground, too much of it floods through the storm sewers:

House builders face new rules on paving driveways in an attempt to tackle river pollution, the water minister said as she called for an end to the practice.

Rebecca Pow, who spoke to The Telegraph about its Clean Rivers campaign in her Somerset constituency of Taunton Deane, said new developments could have to prove they had sustainable drainage systems before they were allowed to connect to local sewage networks in order to avoid them becoming overwhelmed and pumping sewage into rivers.

That is likely to include restrictions on solid paved driveways,

Well, yes, we agree, it is possible to try to micromanage matters in that manner. You’d probably have to go on to make sure no one created rockeries in the back garden, paved over any area for a little patio and so on. For it is the absence of soil to soak up the rain that is the problem.

There are those who would welcome the delights of so micromanaging other peoples’ lives as well. Every society, sadly, has more than its fair share of those.

We’d like to suggest that there is an alternative solution here. Lift the restrictions that insist upon 30 to 35 dwellings per hectare of planned land. That is, allow people to have the large gardens that are the traditional desire of the British. At which point, if they pave over a car’s worth of land there’s still that much larger area of flowerbeds, lawn - possibly even a veg bed - and so on to do the rainwater management trick.

That is, the problem is to resolved not by government doing something but by government stopping doing the damn fool thing it is already doing. As is so often the case.

Or, to put it more bluntly. The problem will be solved once we stop herding the helots into hovels. Now there’s an idea for a free country, eh?