How Britain is at risk of running out of tap water by 2026 ...Middle East

It’s late summer 2026 and Britain is in the midst of a heatwave.

You turn on your tap for water, but nothing comes out. Instead you must queue in the streets to receive water from a standpipe and carry it in a bucket back to your home.

This is an extreme, worst case scenario, but is something scientists warn could plausibly happen if the current dry weather continues into next year.

Britain has been here before; in the summer of 1976 a prolonged drought that started the summer before led to the taps running dry.

Major upgrades are needed to Britain’s old, leaky infrastructure to prevent this happening again as the UK’s weather becomes more extreme.

With the UK currently experiencing its driest spring in over a century, early alarm bells are starting to sound over the country’s water supply.

Spring 2025 is set to be the driest in living memory. The UK has only had about a third of the amount of rain expected for this time of year, according to The Met Office.

Parts of the country, including London, Hampshire, Manchester and Yorkshire went over three weeks without a single drop of rain.

The UK is not officially in drought yet, however the Environment Agency is currently warning there is a ‘medium’ risk of drought this summer without a period of sustained rainfall.

“The last two years were some of the wettest on record for England but drier conditions at the start of this year mean a drought is a possibility and we need to be prepared,” Richard Thompson, the Environment Agency’s Deputy Director of Water said.

Questions are now being asked whether Britain’s water supply can cope. In 2022, the last official period of drought, hosepipe bans were issued across the country and one village in Oxfordshire completely ran out of water.

Experts are quick to warn Britain is still a long way from crisis point, while still raising concerns about the position we currently find ourselves in.

Bridport, Dorset in the summer of 1976 (Photo: Frank Barratt/Keystone/Getty)

“UK reservoirs are designed to refill towards the end of spring, and if they have not, then they’re not in the place we want them to be,” explained Dr Barnaby Dobson from Imperial College London.

The latest update from the Environment Agency, issued two weeks ago, stated that reservoir storage across England was at 84 per cent of total capacity, compared to 90 per cent at the same period in 2022.

“It’s not like we’re going to have day zero anytime soon… we’re going into summer with probably a bit less than feels comfortable and then how problematic that is depends on what happens over the summer,” Dr Dobson said.

What will happen if it doesn’t rain soon?

While showery weather has returned to parts of the UK, experts warn it will take a prolonged period of rain to properly replenish the country’s water reserves.

“We do need a substantial amount of rain,” said Professor Hannah Cloke from the University of Reading. “If we don’t get that, then there are going to be a few problems around.”

The next stage is usually hosepipe bans. While this hasn’t happened yet, scientists and water companies have warned they could be on the horizon.

A next step would be restricting the water use of some businesses, such as public gardens and swimming pools, according to Alastair Chisholm, Director of Policy at the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management.

When is a drought officially declared?

There are four stages of drought in the UK that demand certain responses from the authorities: prolonged dry weather, drought, severe drought and recovering from drought.

It is up to the Environment Agency to decide whether an area is in drought and what level applies to them.

There is no single definition, but instead the regulator monitors a number of factors, including rainfall, river flows, groundwater levels and reservoir storage.

There are typically a series of processes water companies go through as their water supply depletes. Many have started on the first stage, which is warning customers to begin reducing their usage.

“At the same time, what happens in parallel is the water companies are allowed to take water from places that they wouldn’t usually be allowed to take water from,” he added. This includes environmentally sensitive rivers, such as chalk streams.

“In very, very crude terms, before public supplies run out, we will start to suck the environment dry.”

This is obviously devastating for nature and for Britain’s struggling rivers, which suffer terribly during periods of drought. A report published last year by the Wildlife Trusts found drought is now considered the biggest risk to the UK’s nature reserves.

All of this would have to happen before the UK’s reservoirs reach crisis point and the public is forced to queue in the streets for water.

A heatwave this summer could result in isolated cases of areas temporarily running out of water, as happened in Oxfordshire in 2022. Chisholm explained this usually happens due to drinking water treatment works struggling to cope with a sudden surge in demand.

Experts predict the UK would have to remain in drought for one to two years before water companies started to worry about standpipes on the street.

“We would say in the UK we are designed to outlast a one-year drought. So if you have a two-year drought, then then you end up in the kind of emergency situations,” Dr Dobson said,

“If we have a continued dry summer and then a dry winter and then another dry summer, we will be in a very difficult position,” Professor Cloke agreed.

This is what happened in the summer of 1976, which came at the end of the driest 16-month period in the UK in more than 250 years.

Standpipes were also used in West Yorkshire in 1995, the driest summer ever in the UK.

But one particularly rainy month would be enough for the UK to avoid this fate, according to Dr Dobson. This happened in 2022 when the hot, dry summer was followed by above-average rainfall over the Autumn.

Low water levels in Colliford Lake in Cornwall in 2022 (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Is the UK’s infrastructure ready for climate change?

A multi-year drought still remains a very extreme scenario in the UK, however prolonged periods of dry weather are becoming more common as a result of climate change.

The Environment Agency currently predicts the UK will need an additional five billion litres of water above current supply levels by 2050, which means water companies will be required to make major investments in their infrastructure.

No new reservoir has been built in the UK since 1992, shortly after water companies were privatised. While several water companies have plans to build new reservoirs, these are not expected to be completed until the 2030s. The average household bill is expected to increase by £31 a year to pay for infrastructure upgrades.

The Environment Secretary Steve Reed has warned that the UK will not have enough drinking water to meet demand by the 2030s if our infrastructure is not improved.

“We are not water resilient in this country, and we do really need to think about it,” Professor Cloke said. “We are running a little bit to the edge in terms of being able to keep the taps switched on.”

Another major problem is leakage. Almost a fifth of England’s water supply is lost by water companies before it reaches customers, more than enough to supply Greater London.

“There’s nothing more frustrating in the middle of a drought, when everything is dry, to see drinking water bursting through the road and running away downhill. But of course, that’s the reality,” Professor Cloke said.

A spokesperson for Water UK, which represents water companies, said firms are starting work on nine reservoirs and were “setting new records for repairing leaks”.

They said water companies “haven’t been able to invest enough” and called for changes to the regulatory system so that vital infrastructure, such as reservoirs, could be fast-tracked.

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs blamed “crumbling” water infrastructure on “years of underinvestment”.

They added: “We are monitoring water levels and expect water companies to cut leaks and take action to protect supplies.”

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