UK ministers explore raising price of water for industrial users amid shortages

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Despite the UK being a famously wet country, the precarious nature of the water supply has been made particularly acute this summer, with almost three-quarters of England and all of Wales in drought and 27 million people facing restrictions on their water use.

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While millions of households in England are paying record levels for their water bills, Wakeham said that, for big industrial customers, the more water they used, the less they paid.

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With the government committed to make England an AI superpower, there are also questions about where water-hungry datacentres will get their resources from. Water UK, the body representing the UK water industry, warned the UK would not have enough water for future datacentres.

“The reason datacentres are water-hungry is because water is so cheap,” said Wakeham.

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Wakeham agreed there was an issue with drinking water being used for cooling and industrial supply, and said the agency was “working with the government to look at different ways of pricing and valuing water to make sure that the right water goes to the right places”. She said this could result in water becoming more expensive for industrial users.

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“We want to keep bills as low as possible for consumers and make sure industry uses less drinking-quality water where it isn’t needed, while making it easier to reuse water so every drop counts. The water system in this country is broken. That’s why we’re delivering the biggest reform in a generation, so water is there for the people who need it.”