High compliance for Scots drinking water, but quality cannot be taken for granted, watchdog warns

99.88% of drinking water in Scotland met the required standards in 2023, according to the Drinking Water Quality Regulator's annual report.

However Matt Bower, the Drinking Water Quality Regulator, warned that ageing water treatment assets and changing source water quality meant the country could not take such high quality for granted. “We must ensure that the scale and pace of investment in the maintenance and replacement of water assets is sufficient to safeguard the consistently high quality of our drinking water for future generations,” he said.

The quality of water leaving water treatment works and treated water storage points in Scotland, while still high, showed a slight deterioration in compliance with the standards on the previous year.

It reported 29 water quality incidents requiring detailed investigation by the regulator during 2023 as “a very similar figure to previous years.”