Currently, the UK as a whole uses about 14bn litres/day of water. According to the Environment Agency’s latest estimate, England will require around 5bn litres/day more water by 2050, meaning measures must be taken to reduce supply scarcity.

Photo credit: Jonathan Bean

Construction is about to begin on the UK’s first new reservoir for more than three decades. In Ofwat’s 2024 price review (PR24), the regulator reached an agreement that allows water companies to spend £7.9bn on improving water infrastructure over the next five years, which covers building the nine additional reservoirs. These alone have the potential to produce 670m litres/day of extra water, once completed after 2030. In addition, Severn Trent has plans to upgrade the Rudyard reservoir in Staffordshire.

Concerns have been raised over how Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to make the UK a “world leader” in Artificial Intelligence (AI) could put already stretched supplies of drinking water under strain, and the impact these plans might have on the government’s plans for clean energy production by 2030. Some of the new reservoirs are in areas where new data centres are set to be built, and it is not known how much water the massive new data centres could take from them. In a new report, the Royal Academy of Engineering calls on the government to ensure tech companies accurately report how much energy and water their data centres are using.