Your reporters came up with a good list of urgent climate policies in response to Andy Burnham’s somewhat surreal statement focusing on the sale of disposable barbecues following a Cobra meeting (From grey water to cool spaces: 10 climate crisis policies Britain needs right now, 12 August), but they missed out the No 1 issue: the UK’s water-storage capacity.
It is blindingly obvious that we need to dramatically and rapidly increase water storage. The current plans to fast-track the building of nine reservoirs by 2050 might be speedy by the standards of UK infrastructure delivery projects, but they may well have been overtaken by climate change trends.
Indeed, if we had had forward-thinking governments and a functional water industry, some of them would have been built by now to match historic population growth. As it stands, only one reservoir is forecast to come online in the next 10 years.
Similarly, the building of farm-level water storage, which must be far simpler to deliver, appears mired in bureaucracy and is not rolling out nearly fast enough. Cutting through the red tape and supporting the building of thousands of farm ponds and small reservoirs would surely result in better crop yields while reducing pressure on summer water supply and wildlife habitat.
We urgently need to hear from the government on how it is going to address a national security issue that has moved from threat to living reality this summer.
Simon Drury
Wandsworth, London
Your report on low reservoir levels (14 August) notes that no new reservoir has been built in the UK since 1992. Yet only months ago England emerged from its eighth wettest winter since records began, with rainfall 42% above the winter average. Now we are in drought.
The Victorians understood that reliable water supplies required storage. Faced with rapidly growing cities, they built reservoirs, aqueducts and local water-storage infrastructure. There are ageing water towers still dotted around Britain as monuments to the simple principle that it is sensible to store water close to where it will be needed. Governments like large infrastructure projects, and we undoubtedly need new strategic, large-capacity reservoirs. But these cost billions and can take many years to plan and build.
Why not also develop a national network of smaller modern distributed-storage reservoirs, either underground or covered, close to the communities they serve, capturing water during our wet winters? They would have the additional advantage of being installed incrementally rather than waiting years for huge projects to be completed.
Pete Ford
Sustainability lead, HealthTech Research Centre, Exeter
For the past 50 years we have lived in part of a large country house. We were lucky that a past owner was a forward-thinking architect who built a large underground tank to hold 20,000 gallons of rainwater gathered from the roof. He also installed a pump engine, now defunct, to bring water up 360 feet from an underground source to a reservoir, and we inherited a smaller underground tank not far from the vegetable garden.
With these three receptacles we have been able to store and pump water to our vegetable plots during the last two summers. Surely similar underground water storage could be incorporated into housing estates to take advantage of the wet spring seasons we have been having.
Sheila Carey-Thomas
Alton, Hampshire
We already are living with the reality of surge pricing for our water (Water companies in England and Wales explore ‘surge pricing’ during drought, 16 August). Anglian Water imposes a water tariff on Norwich that is around 2.5 times greater than the winter tariff. The outcome for two adults is a bill of £99.98 for 82 days between May and July 2026. We are low water users at 8 cubic metres, which is less than the typical usage for one person. We recycle water in the garden and apply the lessons of the summer of 1976 – except for sharing a bath, as we prefer showers. I can’t see what further reductions we can make.
Maureen Begley
Norwich
