Overview

• England’s public water supply is projected to fall short by five billion litres a day by 2055 due to hotter, drier summers, an eight million population rise and growing industrial demand
• The government has locked in £104 billion of private spending over the next five years to build reservoirs, desalination plants and water recycling schemes
• Officials say water firms must halve daily leakage of about 2.7 billion litres and manage demand to cover 60 percent of the projected shortfall before new projects come online
• Households and businesses are urged to conserve water by taking shorter showers, turning off taps when brushing teeth, running full appliance loads and reducing data centre email storage
• The densely populated south-east faces the steepest gap—an extra two billion litres a day by 2055—prompting calls for recycled water use in data centres and hydrogen production