Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps the Department is taking to help tackle water scarcity.

The Government recognises the importance of having enough water through the Environment Improvement Plan – ‘Goal 3: Water - We will ensure English waters are clean, resilient and plentiful.’ Within this plan, there are stretching targets to reduce demand for water.

The Government is playing its part by introducing a new mandatory water efficiency label and reviewing building standards to help people use a little less water.

In addition, water companies are required to publish water resources management plans (WRMP) that set out how the companies will provide secure public water supplies for a 25-year period. The recently published 2024 WRMPs set out how water supplies would be maintained over the coming years through demand management, leakage reduction and enhancing supplies from river and groundwater sources in the time period before new strategic sources of water, such as large reservoirs, come online.

The Environment Agency (EA) published the National Framework for Water Resources in June 2025, which sets out the current and future pressures on water resources and the main actions needed across government, regulators, regional groups, water companies and all sectors of use to address the challenge of water scarcity. This includes the need for joined-up planning between different water-using sectors to identify collaborative solutions for water resources.

The EA is carrying this work forward, with a programme of resilience workstreams across sectors, including for public water supply, agriculture, energy, and data centres.