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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what funds he will make available for local authorities to invest in public water fountains and refill stations.

The Government recognises the importance of making drinking water more readily available in public places, as a means of reducing single-use plastic bottles. As laid out in the 25 Year Environment Plan, and our Resource and Waste Strategy we are already taking action in this area.

The Government is committed to supporting water companies, high street retailers, coffee shops and transport hubs to offer new refill points for people to top-up water bottles for free in every major city and town in England. The water industry is developing a network of refill points through its Refill app, managed by City to Sea. The app signposts to over 30,000 free refill points and was estimated to have saved over 100 million single use bottles from entering our waste stream in 2019.

There are examples of water companies working with cities and communities across the country: the Mayor of London has partnered with Thames Water to install a network of more than 100 drinking water fountains in London, Yorkshire Water has installed fountains in Hull and Wessex Water is installing fountains in Wiltshire, United Utilities have helped install fountains in Manchester, and South West Water have also supported the installation of drinking water fountains on beaches.

While Covid-19 has held up some of this work more recently given the complexities of having open drinking water fountains in the midst of a pandemic, the investment in water fountains fits with Water UK’s wider commitment to prevent the equivalent of 4 billion plastic water bottles ending up as waste by 2030.