Hastings MP demands action on leaks and water shortages

Helena Dollimore, MP for Hastings and Rye, has called for urgent improvements to water infrastructure and a crackdown on leaks, which currently account for nearly three billion litres of lost water each day across the country.

National drought conditions have highlighted the UK’s long-term water supply challenges, with the Environment Agency reporting that reservoir storage in England has dropped to 66 per cent, well below the seasonal average.

Ms Dollimore said: "We’ve had a number of places in the country that have seen significant population growth and infrastructure growth, but not the change in water resources to come with that.

"So, we urgently need to build more reservoirs, and we need to see reservoirs as the important national infrastructure that they are."

Nine new reservoirs are planned in England by 2050, after a more than 30-year gap in construction.

Alistair Carmichael, chair of the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, described the situation as "desperately worrying" and said it could have been avoided with better long-term planning.

Current storage levels have fallen from 85 per cent at the end of June, with several reservoirs now "exceptionally low."

The National Infrastructure Commission estimates that up to an extra 4,000 megalitres of water per day will be needed by 2050, requiring at least £20 billion of investment.

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said: "This Government is securing water supplies for the future with a record-breaking £104 billion of private investment to fix leaking pipes and build nine new reservoirs.

"Work is already under way and we are also radically streamlining the planning process by automatically designating nationally significant status to projects essential for our national water resilience."