Water, Growth and Resilience: Why East Anglia Cannot Afford to Wait

Every time East Anglia – indeed the country – experiences another prolonged dry spell, we seem to have the same conversation. Reservoir levels fall, restrictions are introduced, farmers look anxiously at crops, and water companies ask customers to use less. 

Then, eventually, it rains. 

The summer of 2026 has brought that into particularly sharp focus. Parts of eastern England recorded near-total rainfall deficits from mid-June onwards this year.[1] Then, July was confirmed as the driest July on record in England, with just 10% of the long-term average rainfall and less than 1mm recorded across parts of the east and south-east. By late July, the Environment Agency had declared drought conditions across East Anglia and several other regions, warning that water was being consumed faster than nature could replenish it.[2] 

Reservoir levels fell well below long-term averages, with storage across almost all monitored sites classed as below normal or lower for the time of year.[3] Millions of customers then faced restrictions on their water use. 

For East Anglia though, hosepipe bans are only the most visible symptom of a much bigger issue. 

The region is being asked to accommodate more homes, support economic growth, maintain nationally important food production and improve environmental resilience, all while depending on an increasingly precarious water supply. 

Agriculture is already feeling the pressure 

Early assessments of the 2026 harvest suggest yields for wheat, spring barley and oats have all fallen below their ten-year averages. AHDB’s provisional figures put wheat yields at around 6.8 tonnes per hectare, compared with a ten-year average of 7.9. Spring barley was estimated at 4.1 tonnes per hectare against an average of 5.7, while oat yields fell to around 4.2 tonnes per hectare compared with a historic average of 5.4.[4] 

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit has estimated that heat and drought could reduce UK production by as much as 2.5 million tonnes compared with earlier forecasts, representing hundreds of millions of pounds in lost agricultural output.[5] 

Those numbers have implications at a national level, but in East Anglia they are also intensely local. The region contains some of the country’s most productive vegetable and cereal crop growing land, and many farming businesses are already making difficult decisions about what they grow, how they irrigate and whether future investment remains viable. 

England has experienced drought conditions in three of the last five years, so this summer isn’t a one-off. East Anglia feels that particularly acutely as one of the driest regions in the UK, with climate change making hotter, drier summers and periods of water scarcity increasingly likely and more intense.  At the same time, population growth, housing demand, agricultural production and environmental pressures are increasing competition for the same resource.  

Climate resilience and growth are therefore not separate questions for the region: the ability to accommodate one increasingly depends on our response to the other.  We want the region to keep feeding the country. We want new homes to be built, farms to be successful, businesses to invest and grow, and healthier rivers with lower levels of abstraction.  All are reasonable ambitions. But they rely on a water system capable of operating in a climate that is already changing. 

Infrastructure built for a different set of pressures 

Climate change is clearly making the situation more difficult – much of the network serving today’s population and economy was designed for a different level of demand and a more predictable climate. 

The pressure becomes particularly obvious during periods of extreme weather. During the June heatwave, Anglian Water reported putting a record 1.6 billion litres of water into supply in a single day, around one-third above typical demand, while dry ground conditions were simultaneously increasing the risk of burst mains and leakage across the network.[6] 

Reducing leakage is therefore essential. So is improving efficiency, upgrading ageing infrastructure and making better use of the water already available. 

But there is a limit to how far efficiency measures can stretch an already constrained system. 

If East Anglia is expected to keep growing and producing while natural water availability becomes less reliable, the conversation eventually has to move from using less water to creating a more resilient supply. 

That means confronting questions which are much harder, more expensive and more politically sensitive. 

Policy is starting to catch up 

There are signs that government is beginning to recognise that climate resilience, water security and growth cannot be planned independently of one another.  The revised National Planning Policy Framework, published on 17 August 2026, brings water much more firmly into national planning policy. Its focus on securing clean energy and water reflects the need both to adapt infrastructure to a changing climate and to ensure that housing and economic growth are supported by the capacity needed to sustain them.  

That builds on the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and wider reforms to the nationally significant infrastructure planning regime, intended to shorten consenting times and accelerate the delivery of critical infrastructure. Major water infrastructure, including reservoirs and water-transfer schemes, sits squarely within that wider push for faster delivery. 

And for East Anglia, the link between water capacity and development is no longer theoretical. 

In July, the Government’s Water Delivery Taskforce announced an agreement with Anglian Water intended to bring 18,771 homes across East Anglia, Lincolnshire and the Home Counties closer to delivery. Anglian Water had previously objected to a number of large developments because of concerns about wastewater-treatment capacity. The new approach brings the company, developers and planning authorities together earlier so that infrastructure improvements can be phased alongside development. 

It is a useful illustration of what happens when water infrastructure is treated as part of the growth plan rather than dealt with once development has already been proposed. 

But it also exposes the scale of the issue. If almost 19,000 homes can be held back by water capacity, then water is already determining where and how quickly growth can happen. 

The policy direction is therefore moving towards the same conclusion: ambitions for housing and economic growth (as well as food security) cannot be separated from the infrastructure required to supply them with water. 

What are we actually prepared to build? 

Anglian Water is progressing proposals for two major new reservoirs in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, while strategic water-transfer schemes are becoming an increasingly important part of national water planning. 

Major reservoirs, transfer schemes and other strategic assets can take many years to plan, consent and deliver. They require major capital investment, complex land assembly, environmental assessment and extensive engagement with affected communities and landowners. 

Planning reform may shorten parts of the process, but it cannot remove the need to make difficult decisions about where infrastructure goes or who is affected by it. 

By the time a region is visibly short of water, it is already too late to start planning the infrastructure needed to solve the problem. 

Reservoirs will form part of the answer, but leakage reduction, demand management, water recycling and inter-regional transfers all need to play a role. 

Desalination also deserves a less reflexive response than it sometimes receives. 

Britain being an island does not make seawater an easy answer to water scarcity. Desalination remains costly and energy intensive, but the technology and the energy system are changing. 

The Environment Agency [7] has already signalled that desalination could play an increasing role in securing future water supplies, particularly where other options are limited, and has encouraged water companies to consider it alongside other supply and demand measures. It also points to the value of desalination as a rainfall-independent source of water, particularly during drought.  

That does not mean East Anglia (nor other regions for that matter) should simply build desalination plants. It does mean the option should form part of a serious assessment of how a more diversified and resilient water system could operate over the coming decades. 

There will not be a single intervention that solves this. Resilience will come from having more options, more capacity and more ability to move water to where it is needed. 

None of this infrastructure arrives without consequences 

Reservoirs require land, pipelines cross farms and new treatment assets alter landscapes. Construction can disrupt businesses and communities long before any wider benefit is felt. 

It is relatively easy to argue the theory that the country needs more resilient water infrastructure. It is much harder when that infrastructure affects someone’s home, business, farm or local landscape. 

That makes the way projects are developed every bit as important as the engineering solution itself. 

And there is an important tension here in the current planning reforms. 

Removing mandatory statutory pre-application consultation may help reduce unnecessary delay, but faster consenting cannot mean weaker engagement. 

If anything, the opposite is true. 

When communities, farmers and landowners are being asked to accommodate strategic infrastructure in the national interest, early engagement becomes more important, not less. They need to understand the problem being solved, the alternatives considered and the reasons for a particular intervention. They also need meaningful opportunities to influence how impacts are managed and how schemes are ultimately delivered. 

Good engagement should not exist because the process requires it. It should exist because major infrastructure is more likely to be deliverable when those affected by it have been involved properly and early. 

Water resilience needs to shape how we plan for our future 

East Anglia cannot continue to pursue housing, economic growth and food production separately from the water resilience needed to sustain them as our climate changes.  Water infrastructure needs to be planned as enabling infrastructure in the same way we think about transport and energy, but with the additional reality that it must now perform in a climate that is becoming hotter, drier and less predictable.  

We need to move beyond largely reactive responses to individual droughts or capacity constraints and commit now to a long-term mix of investment: accelerating strategic reservoirs and transfer schemes, continuing to drive down leakage, expanding water recycling and properly assessing the role technologies such as desalination could play. It also means aligning water planning much more closely with decisions about housing, economic development, land use, and climate. The Water Delivery Taskforce[8] intervention shows what can happen when those conversations take place earlier. It should become normal practice rather than an intervention required when capacity has already become a blocker. 

The recent planning reforms can help create the conditions for faster delivery. They cannot substitute for making the decisions themselves. 

For East Anglia, that means deciding now what infrastructure will be required to support the region we expect to have in twenty or thirty years’ time, securing the land and investment needed to deliver it and involving affected communities early enough to influence how it happens. 

Otherwise, the decision will eventually be made for us. 

Water availability will determine where homes can be built, where businesses can grow and how much food the region can continue to produce in a changing economic and political landscape – and in the face of a rapidly changing climate with hotter, drier summers. Investing ahead of those constraints is no longer simply a question of resilience. It is a prerequisite for East Anglia’s future and sustainable growth. 

 

[1] Farmers Guide, Harvest 2026 on course to be worst on record, with £390m losses. 
[2] The Guardian, Half of England officially in ‘exceptionally serious’ drought, July 2026. 
[3] Environment Agency, Dry weather and drought in England: 31 July to 6 August 2026. 
[4] AHDB, Harvest progress across the UK, reports and interactive tool. 
[5] Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, Impact of heatwaves and drought on UK harvest prospects in 2026. 
[6] Anglian Water, Record supply update, June 2026. 
[7] Environment Agency, Desalination for public water supply: Environment Agency position statement, 8 October 2025. 
[8] Defra, Almost 20,000 new homes unlocked after breakthrough by government Water Delivery Taskforce, 2 July 2026.