New campaign urges public to reduce water use as UK emerges from heatwave

Exclusive: £75m publicity drive will ask people to treat water as precious resource and cut daily use by 28 litres

The biggest ever campaign to encourage the public to reduce their water use will launch this week, as the UK emerges from record temperatures attributed to the climate crisis.

The £75m publicity drive, called Let’s Save Water , will advise and encourage people to treat water as a precious resource and has a target for everyone to cut their daily use by 28 litres – or two large buckets – from the current average use of about 140 litres a day.

A partnership involving water companies, the water regulator Ofwat, the Environment Agency , the Met Office and Natural Resources Wales is behind the campaign, which will be paid for by water companies over four years.

Water use in England and Wales is among the highest in Europe, with countries such as Germany and the Netherlands averaging 120 litres a person a day by comparison.

A team of behavioural psychologists are advising the campaign, which aims to change attitudes to water use.

“The critical issue is, how do we make people believe water is an important resource?” said Prof Thomas Webb, a social psychologist at the University of Sheffield. “So we need to change assumptions. We need to make people aware of how much water they are using and help them see this as a collective effort, and something they can be proud of.”

Water shortages in England and Wales are predicted to reach 5bn litres a day by 2055 – equivalent to a shortfall of 2,000 Olympic-sized pools – as a result of climate change, population increases and the expansion of water-intensive industries such as datacentres.

But research for the campaign reveals that people have no idea how much water they use , and are underestimating their useage by a factor of about five – on average, people believe they use about 30 litres a day, compared with actual usage of about 140 litres.

A hosepipe ban came into effect in Kent on Friday morning, days after South East Water urged customers to use water sparingly as demand increased in the heatwave.

Prof Lizzie Kendon, the strategic head of climate processes and projections at the Met Office , said: “Climate change is driving increasingly extreme weather patterns, with wetter winters, drier summers and more intense bursts of rainfall.

“When rain falls on dry, hardened ground, much of it cannot soak into the soil, where it is most valuable, instead it runs off and is being lost. There is an urgent need for action.”

The campaign is calling for the public to make small everyday changes to their habits to reduce water use – such as taking shorter showers, using water butts in gardens and fixing dripping taps. Showers use 10 litres of water a minute, and replacing the shower head with a water-saving model can reduce use by up to 50%, lowering energy bills.

Prof Ian Walker, the head of psychology at Swansea University and one of the academic advisers to the campaign, said people needed to be empowered to act.

“Ideally, what you need is a system for taking information from a smart meter, feeding it to a household in real time and combining it with meaningful information about what to do about it.”

He said one-off changes, like purchasing a more water-efficient shower head and washing machine, were the easiest behavioural changes to encourage. But habitual behaviours – which constituted most water consumption – were much harder to change.

Those behind the campaign acknowledge that with public trust in water companies at an all-time low – as a result of record sewage pollution , drinking water outages in south-east England, and companies including Thames Water in high levels of debt and failing to meet their legal duties – the request to cut water usage might be a difficult sell.

Leaks by water companies amount to 19% of water demand, and no new reservoirs have been built in England by water companies for 30 years.

The industry has now pledged to build 10 new reservoirs as part of a £104bn investment over the next five years.

James Wallace, the chief executive of River Action, said: “We welcome any initiative that encourages people to conserve water. Every litre saved helps reduce pressure on our rivers, the lifeblood of our nation.”

But Wallace said the greatest responsibility for saving water still lay with the companies themselves: since privatisation, £78bn has been paid to shareholders, and each day more than 3bn litres of drinking water are lost through leaking pipes. “We need a fully funded national emergency plan that holds polluters and water companies accountable.”

Shas Sheehan, the chair of the House of Lords environment and climate change committee, which recently called for a society-wide campaign to reduce water use, said it was essential that the campaign was supported by a credible, year-round communication strategy. “That strategy must be transparent, consistent and demonstrate that water companies are taking visible steps to put their own house in order. The campaign must bring the public with it,” she said.

“At present, there is a clear risk that messages on reducing water use will not land as intended, given the erosion of public trust in water companies … water companies must lead by example if they are to expect sustained changes in public behaviour.”