Affinity report and poll warn England is running dry with action urgently needed

(by Karma Loveday)

The public and experts agree that England’s national water security is in jeopardy and requires  urgent action. That’s according to polling and a major new policy report from Affinity Water. 

Cross-party consensus on water security shortfall

Of over 4,000 adults surveyed by Thinks Insight & Strategy, 70% said previous governments of all parties have failed to prioritise national water security; 68% said urgent action is needed; and 86% want the Government to do more to raise awareness.

56% are personally concerned about the UK’s water security in future, with rates of concern significantly higher among parents and the under 35s.

Worries go beyond the tap. 68% said future water shortages pose a serious threat to the UK’s economic stability; 64% believe the NHS is unprepared for the health emergencies that future water shortages could cause; 64% said the UK’s rivers and countryside are at risk of being permanently damaged by drought; and 60% said the housing crisis will get worse as a lack of water stops new homes from being built.

In terms of desired policy interventions, 85% supported making chemical companies pay for cleaning up PFAS; 83% supported fines on large corporations that fail to reduce excessive water use; and 75% supported requiring new homes to be built with non-potable systems. 40% went further, arguing the Government should declare a national water emergency.

The views were pretty consistent across party voting lines, from Green to Reform – a rarity in British polling.

Public concern rose sharply once people were shown evidence. For instance, agreement that the UK is entering a water security crisis rose from 39% at the start of the survey to 54% by the end. Affinity Water said this suggests "the public is not complacent about water, but under-informed”.

Policy calls

The polling accompanied Affinity Water's release of Running dry: England’s water security crisis – a major policy report warning that the UK lacks a credible national water security strategy. Running dry examines the limitations of the current planning framework, which data centres, energy generation and industrial users remain largely outside of; the evidential weaknesses in demand reduction assumptions, especially given that government-promised interventions such as mandatory water-efficiency labelling and tighter building regulations have repeatedly failed to materialise; and the consequences of regulatory fragmentation.

The report set out seven recommendations to address the structural weaknesses in England’s water security framework:

• Publish a statutory National Water Security Strategy with binding commitments and clear accountability. “Commitments on per capita consumption must be grounded in savings that have actually been delivered – not targets that were set but not met. Companies have invested significantly in demand management activities, but results have not matched projections. Any future commitments must be accompanied by clear government funding and delivery mechanisms, not assumed in advance of action.”

• Develop a National Water Transfer Network to enable strategic movement of water across England. 

• Place the Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development (RAPID) on a statutory footing with enhanced coordination powers. 

• Introduce an Environmental Restoration Levy to fund catchment-scale remediation. “In practice, this would include river restoration, wetland creation, and habitat enhancement, funded by a levy on sectors responsible for water quality degradation. Government, not water companies or their customers, would administer the fund. The levy framework should be clear about what interventions qualify and how outcomes are measured.” 

• Integrate water availability into the planning system through a tiered development framework. 

• Require progressive water charging and mandatory efficiency improvements for large non-household users such as data centres. “Rather than audits – which can be completed without any resulting action – the requirement should be for mandatory efficiency improvement plans with binding targets and published progress reports. Water re-use and circular economy innovations should be encouraged as part of this process.” 

• Reform economic regulation to prioritise long-term asset health and resilience. "This should also explicitly require companies to increase system-level resilience by removing single points of failure and reducing reliance on single sources of supply, maintaining a balance between groundwater and surface water sources to guard against source-specific climate vulnerability.”