South East Water: Disruption of Supply

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes good points. One problem that we clearly have is that there are parts of the country that have plenty of water and parts that have very little water. Unfortunately, the parts that have very little water tend to be the ones with the highest populations. We have to look at how we are going to manage that long term, because clearly what we are doing at the moment simply is not working and is not the right approach. Again, that is why we want to reform the water industry and shake it up properly. It is critical that the points the noble Lord makes are taken into consideration, because we have to get this right.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

The Minister knows that she has my full support in shaking up the water industry, as we have discussed on quite a number of occasions. While it is all very well for us to tell her to hurry up and supply more water, can she tell the House how long it takes to build a reservoir?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

That is a very good question. Obviously, we have not built a new reservoir for more than 30 years. That is one reason why we have reduced domestic capacity, as the noble Lord knows. We need to just get on with this as best we can. We are trying to get a co-ordinated system-wide approach to it. Havant Thicket is the first new reservoir, so we are using that as a live learning opportunity for the Government, regulators and the water companies, because we all need to work together if we are going to do this. A reservoir senior sponsorship group was established by the Water Delivery Taskforce, designed to both identify and resolve any barriers that we have in delivering a new reservoir. There has been talk of reservoirs for years, so we need to work out why it is not happening so that we can crack on and make it happen.