That is the equivalent of more than 1 million wheelie bins full of water a day.<\/p>\n
According to the Environment Agency, the south-east is expected to be hit the hardest by looming water shortfalls, which are forecast to total 5 billion litres a day across England by 2050.<\/p>\n
This is more than a third of the 14 billion litres of water used across the UK every day.<\/p>\n
In the south-east of England, the 2.5 billion litre shortfall will be nearly half of the region\u2019s present use of 6 billion litres a day.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/SEI_248793903.jpg\")
The five regions which will be the worst hit by water shortages <\/p>\n
Water companies have drawn up plans to tackle the shortages amid fears over looming droughts in the next 25 years.<\/p>\n
However, concerns that local authorities, the government, and regulators are not doing nearly enough to prevent significant shortages are mounting.<\/p>\n
Water shortages are also expected before 2050 unless significant steps are taken to increase supplies.<\/p>\n
At current supply levels, the south-east of England will face a shortage of 876 million litres a day<\/a> by 2030, with England as a whole facing a 1.48 billion shortfall.<\/p>\n The deficit is expected to rise to 1.7 billion litres in the south-east and 3 billion litres nationally by 2040.<\/p>\n A new report <\/a>by the National Audit Office on Friday found that \u201cgovernment and the regulators have failed to drive sufficient investment in the water sector\u201d to ensure the necessary steps are taken to avoid water shortages.<\/p>\n Although there is no national plan, 30 major water supply projects are in development, including nine reservoirs<\/a> and seven sewage recycling facilities<\/a>, which the regulator Ofwat estimates will cost about \u00a352bn to build in total.<\/p>\n There are even question marks over whether that would be enough to avert water scarcity, as the water companies aim to make up almost half of the 5 billion litre shortfall through reductions in demand by using water more efficiently and metering, which encourages lower water use.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the unprecedented situation facing the sector, Defra and the regulators need to act urgently to address industry performance and resilience to ensure the sector can meet government targets,\u201d said Gareth Davies, head of the NAO.<\/p>\n Alastair Chisholm, director of policy at the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM), added: \u201cThose water-saving targets are ambitious.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then you have to look at how ambitious comparatively all the other measures are, given in the same timescale we\u2019re needing to build 9 or 10 new reservoirs, other major infrastructure, and make really significant leakage reductions. None of that is easy or has been done at the level in the proposed programmes before,\u201d he told The i Paper.<\/p>\n Of the 5 billion litre shortfall in England, 1.2 billion litres are due to the growing population, and 642 million litres are a result of climate change \u2013 changing rainfall patterns and increased evaporation from rising temperatures.<\/p>\n Other factors include growing business needs and the need to reduce the amount of water taken from rivers and groundwater supplies, which is already at unsustainable levels.<\/p>\n An Environment Agency spokesperson said: \u201cWe recognise the significant challenges facing the water industry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have worked closely with the National Audit Office in producing this report and welcome its substantial contribution to the debate on the future of water regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n A Water UK spokesperson said: \u201cWe\u2019re calling for more direction from Government on the outcomes it wants from the sector and regulation to be reformed so it is simpler and decisions are made faster.\u201d<\/p>\n Ofwat said it would continue \u201cto contribute to the Independent Water Commission\u2019s wider review of the regulatory framework\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With England facing shortfalls of 5 billion litres of water a day at current levels of supply, we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15,6507,20259],"class_list":{"0":"post-55980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-water","13":"tag-water-shortage"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114412518482750277","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}