‘We cannot magic up more water’: the supply problems putting housing targets in England at risk
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- Labour has promised to build 1.5m homes by the end of parliament, but Environment Agency mapping shows roughly a third of the country has no additional river water available for new homes even under normal flow conditions.
- South East Water has been banned by the Environment Agency from taking more water from the Greywell chalk aquifer — a decision the company is appealing — and has failed to deliver a promised pipeline from Surrey Hills to Basingstoke by 2030 after regulators initially disallowed funding.
- Basingstoke and Deane council has been told to build more than 1,000 houses a year, but council leader Paul Harvey said a water cycle study showed demands from new housing may outstrip the limits of sustainable supply.
- Cambridgeshire faces plans for 150,000 additional homes while chalk streams are already being artificially filled by the Environment Agency due to over-extraction; the 5,726 residents of Waterbeach are under a hosepipe ban.
- A water credit scheme in Cambridgeshire, where developers would pay to offset the water increases their housing developments cause, has not started two years on and no developer has paid in any money.
- Tonbridge and Malling in Kent faces government demands for 19,000 homes by 2042, with South East Water telling the council there is insufficient supply.
Why it matters: Central government housing targets are now directly colliding with environmental regulators: the Environment Agency, Natural England and water companies are all flagging that the water does not exist to supply Labour's 1.5m homes, and at least three local councils cannot approve local plans as a result. South East Water's missing Surrey Hills pipeline, initially blocked by funding disallowance, crystallises decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure that Labour's growth push cannot simply override.
