East of England 'not over last year's drought'

A senior official at Anglian Water (AW) has told a parliamentary committee the region is still getting over last year's drought.

Geoff Darch, AW's head of strategic planning, told members of the House of Lords "we have lots of resilience but it takes time to replenish", adding he was hoping for a full winter's average rainfall.

He also warned climate change and the building of new homes and businesses was putting pressure on water supplies and the risk of further droughts in the east was "a significant concern".

Weather experts have said that so far this winter some parts of the region have had below average rainfall.

Darch told the Lords' Environment Committee: "We are operating in the driest region of the UK and the work that we've done with universities and the Met Office demonstrates that climate change is going to make [the risk of] droughts more significant in the future.

"The Anglian region benefits from large stores of water, both above ground in reservoirs and below in aquifers, and that gives us a lot of resilience to a lot of the weather we saw last year.

"But it takes time to replenish those stores of water and we need to have 100% of a typical winter's average rainfall to get back to a fully restored position."

The Norwich-based weather company WeatherQuest said in December many parts of the east recorded average rainfall, although large parts of Norfolk and Suffolk only recorded around 75%.

Darch said the installation of smart meters in many homes had played a large part in reducing water usage and the company was doing more to tackle leakages.

But he warned: "We know that the droughts are becoming more serious.

"The plan we have is working but we are seeing new risks emerge which we have to manage carefully."

The House of Lords has been trying to find out how prepared the country is to deal with drought after the Environment Agency (EA) warned England will face a shortage of six billion litres of water a day by 2055.

Darch said plans to build more homes in the region and large commercial developments, like the Universal theme park in Bedfordshire and data centres, would create challenges for AW.

He said plans to build two new reservoirs in the east would be "critical" for managing future droughts.

He also called on the government to make developers building new homes include facilities to capture and use rainwater.

"We've got two new towns being proposed for our area.

"You could instantly reduce the demand by one third if you mandated rain water harvesting for flushing toilets... it would be a golden opportunity," he said.

He added that in Belgium, where the law has been changed, water use in new properties has fallen to 80 litres per day.

In most UK properties it is currently 120 litres a day.

The government encourages water harvesting and is consulting on whether further measures are needed.

Darch said there was a problem with poor water quality in parts of the east, with high nitrate levels in some rivers hard to treat due to livestock farming.

Ministers are thinking about making cattle farmers buy licences to fund treatment work. They might also have slurry regularly inspected.

EA said Anglian Water remained at drought level one in Fenland, Norfolk, Norwich and the Broads, while South Essex has moved from drought level one into "business as usual".

Cambridge Water remained at drought level one, as did Essex and Suffolk Water.

Follow East of England news on X, Instagram and Facebook: BBC Beds, Herts & Bucks, BBC Cambridgeshire, BBC Essex, BBC Norfolk, BBC Northamptonshire or BBC Suffolk.