Revealed: how companies ‘secretly’ use billions of litres of public water in drought-hit England

Less than 1% of businesses in England use more water than the daily needs of 10 million people, as millions of households face hosepipe bans and three-quarters of the country is in drought.

Businesses across England use 2.6bn litres a day from the public water supply, which includes potable and non-potable water provided by water companies. In total, businesses account for about 30% of public supply use, with two-thirds of their consumption in water-stressed areas, according to Mosl, the organisation that operates England’s business water market.

Tracking industrial water use appears difficult. Regulators say they are frustrated by a lack of data and “commercial secrecy”, and the water sector says it is prevented from planning effectively for growth industries.

The biggest users of the public water supply include oil refineries, chemical plants and paper mills, and some face no requirement to cut their consumption.

Mosl’s map of business water supply points, ranked by volume used, showed the site of ExxonMobil’s Esso refinery at Fawley, Southampton, as the largest user of public water supply. However, the site includes a number of other operators that also use the water, including waste, gas, chemicals and energy companies.

Mosl cited the refinery’s water use in written evidence to a House of Lords committee as an example of “the high volume of water wastage in industry that is not disincentivised by government or the regulatory framework”.

Mosl did not name the refinery but described its location, which was also visible on its map of supply points.

ExxonMobil disputed Mosl’s figures, saying its water use was commercially confidential. Mosl said it planned to ask the committee to redact parts of its evidence. During reporting, Mosl also removed a report and its supply point map from its website.

The refinery said the “vast majority” of the water it used came from the Solent strait for cooling, while “industrial water” was used for processes that could not easily be reduced without shutting down operating units. Potable water accounted for less than 1% of total consumption, it said.

Apart from refineries, other major users of the public water supply include paper mills and companies in the chemicals and soft drinks industries. But the overall picture of business water use is incomplete. One in 10 businesses are not metered, meaning their use is not measured or reported. Of those that are metered, only 11% have smart meters.

Despite Mosl collecting data on water taken from the public supply, it is not free to share all of it, even with government departments, according to Mosl’s chief executive, Sarah McMath.

McMath told the House of Lords committee that when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) or the Environment Agency requested data, Mosl had to negotiate a bespoke agreement to share it.

Mosl was working with the water regulator, Ofwat, to change this, she said, so that data would be shared when it would benefit “the environment or society”.

A lack of data is already affecting national water planning. Gaps in local authority growth plans, combined with what the Environment Agency and Ofwat describe as “commercial secrecy, especially in the energy sector”, mean plans are often based on assumptions.

The Environment Agency and Ofwat are calling for mandatory reporting of current and projected water use across all sectors to improve water security.

A spokesperson for Mosl said: “Our data highlights both the opportunities and regulatory barriers to incentivising businesses to use less water. Rather than focusing on individual users – many of whom are actively seeking to reduce their water demand – we should focus on creating the right conditions to invest in water efficiency and increase water reuse where it is safe and practical.”

Water resources planning assumes business water consumption will fall by 9% by 2038 and 15% by 2050.

But the trade body Water UK argues the assumption is unrealistic as demand grows from new homes, as datacentres, hydrogen production and other developments. It wants water companies to be able to plan for projected demand rather than government reduction targets.

Companies are not required to report all their water use, and for some, the more water they use, the cheaper each unit becomes.

One operator told Mosl that a single UK datacentre uses 219m litres a year. It also has a tankered-water supply on standby if its mains connection fails, as well as its own borehole as a backup.

Businesses can also take water directly from rivers, lakes, aquifers and the sea via abstraction . This is regulated separately by the Environment Agency.

Some abstraction is invisible. Anyone can take up to 20,000 litres a day from a stream, borehole or spring without a licence or reporting it. The gap covers an estimated 850,000 people and organisations across England, mostly on farms and in rural areas.

Richard Benwell, the chief executive of the NGO coalition Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “It’s surely an injustice that petrochemical and fossil fuel companies most responsible for the climate crisis are also draining … water supplies and drawing more water from our parched environment.

The water campaigner Feargal Sharkey said: “Yet again, regulatory ineptitude is allowed to triumph over the needs of people and the environment. While water supplies run dry, corporate bank accounts are flooded with the proceeds of corporate greed.”

Defra said the government was taking “decisive action to secure water supplies”, including planning to build nine reservoirs and investing in infrastructure.

A Water UK spokesperson said: “Supplies are increasingly at risk because England’s official forecasts for how much water the country needs rely on flawed assumptions. The water needed by fast-growing datacentres is explicitly excluded from the forecasts.

“At the same time, lower water bills have been prioritised over building a resilient system, meaning in some places water companies only have 2% of water spare to deal with increased demand.”

The Environment Agency said abstraction licences had strict conditions and were reviewed regularly, and that it was working towards the 9% reduction in business water use from the public supply.

Meanwhile, England’s water companies are losing about 2.2bn litres of water a day through leaking pipes.