25th September 2026
The hot, dry weather experienced across Britain this year has brought an issue that is usually taken for granted rather sharply into view: water.
For much of the summer, England's reservoirs and rivers came under increasing pressure, with restrictions imposed in some areas. England is now planning a major expansion of its water infrastructure, including new reservoirs, water-transfer schemes, desalination and other sources.
It would be easy to assume that Scotland does not have the same problem. Scotland has mountains, lochs, rivers and considerably more rainfall than much of England.
But that does not necessarily mean that Scotland has an unlimited supply of water available to households and businesses.
Water has to be collected, stored, treated and transported. Rainfall is also very unevenly distributed, and climate change is expected to produce wetter winters but hotter and drier summers. That creates a rather different problem from simply asking whether Scotland has enough water.
Scotland is a wet country, but water is not evenly distributed
Scottish Water supplies around 97% of Scotland's households and businesses. Its water comes from hundreds of different sources, including reservoirs, lochs, rivers and other water sources.
The difficulty is that the places where water is most plentiful are not necessarily the places where demand is greatest.
Scotland's population is not spread evenly across the country. Glasgow and the surrounding urban area contain a particularly large concentration of people, with other major population centres running through the Central Belt. Much of Scotland's rainfall and water resource, however, is found away from these densely populated areas. That creates a different challenge from simply asking whether Scotland has enough water. The question is whether there is enough water in the right place, at the right time, with the infrastructure needed to get it to households and businesses.
Climate change could make this geographical imbalance more significant. Scottish Water's long-term planning recognises that rainfall patterns are changing, with more intense rainfall at some times and greater drought risk at others.
A very wet winter does not automatically solve the problem of having enough water during a prolonged dry summer.
England is preparing for a much bigger water shortage
The scale of the challenge facing England is considerably greater.
The latest National Framework for Water Resources estimates that, without further action, England could face a public water supply deficit of up to 5 billion litres a day by 2055.
Population growth, climate change and increasing demand from sectors such as energy, food production and data centres are all expected to add pressure.
The English strategy is therefore based on two approaches at the same time: reducing demand and developing new sources of supply.
That includes reducing leakage and encouraging households and businesses to use less water, while also developing new infrastructure.
The current programme includes about £8 billion of investment during 2025-30 to progress water-resource measures. It includes plans for 10 new reservoirs, an enlargement of an existing reservoir, nine water-transfer schemes, two desalination schemes and a minewater treatment scheme.
So England is clearly preparing to increase its ability to store and move water.
Scotland is taking a different approach
Scotland is also investing heavily in its water infrastructure, but there is not currently an equivalent programme of ten new major reservoirs.
Scottish Water's proposed 2027-33 business plan involves £13.4 billion of investment in water and wastewater services. Much of this is needed to maintain and replace existing infrastructure, improve resilience, deal with ageing assets and respond to climate change.
The emphasis is therefore considerably broader than simply building more reservoirs.
It includes maintaining pipes and treatment works, improving the resilience of existing supplies, dealing with leakage and ensuring that the network can cope with changing demand and more extreme weather.
The Scottish Government's consultation on water services for 2027-33 also highlights the need to balance reliable water supplies with environmental protection and affordability.
Why not simply build more reservoirs?
There is an obvious question.
If Scotland has plenty of rainfall, why not simply build more reservoirs and store it?
The answer is that reservoirs are expensive and can have significant environmental consequences. They also need to be in the right geographical location and connected to the network that supplies homes and businesses.
There is little point in storing millions of litres of water in a remote area if there is insufficient infrastructure to get that water to where it is needed.
There is also another consideration. Modern water-resource planning is increasingly about using a combination of measures rather than relying on one large reservoir.
That can include reducing leakage, encouraging more efficient use of water, improving connections between different parts of the network and making better use of existing storage.
Scotland could still face shortages
The important point for Scotland is therefore not that it is about to run out of water.
It is that local and seasonal shortages can occur even in a country with a very large overall water resource.
The east of Scotland is particularly relevant. It has a large population and significant economic activity, but does not have the same natural water abundance as some of the wetter parts of the west and north.
That creates a potential problem if climate change produces longer periods of dry weather during the summer.
It is also important to remember that water is needed by much more than households.
Factories, farms, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, schools, power generation and other businesses all depend on reliable supplies.
A shortage therefore becomes an economic issue as well as a household issue.
The Highland picture is different again
For people in Highland, the situation can look rather different from that in Edinburgh or Dundee.
Highland has large quantities of rainfall and many natural water sources, but the population is spread across a very large geographical area.
Some rural properties and businesses also depend on private water supplies rather than the public network.
These smaller supplies can be particularly vulnerable to prolonged dry weather because they may depend on a local spring, well, borehole, burn or other source.
That is another reminder that the question is not simply how much water Scotland receives from the sky.
The important question is whether there is a reliable supply of suitable-quality water available at the point where it is needed.
What about Caithness?
Caithness might appear to be one of the least likely places in Scotland to worry about water.
There is plenty of rainfall, and the county is hardly short of rivers and burns.
But businesses and households still depend on infrastructure to collect, treat and distribute water.
For industry, the question could become even more important in the future.
Caithness is already looking towards new economic activity involving energy, engineering, construction and potentially other industrial developments. Those businesses will need reliable supplies of water just as they need electricity, roads and digital connections.
A future investment decision could therefore involve something as basic as asking whether the local water infrastructure has sufficient capacity.
Scotland's £13.4 billion water investment
The scale of Scottish Water's planned investment demonstrates that the Scottish Government and Scottish Water are not ignoring the problem.
The proposed £13.4 billion programme for 2027-33 covers the whole water and wastewater system rather than simply new water sources.
More than half of the investment is intended for maintaining and improving essential infrastructure, including pipes and treatment works. The programme is also designed to make infrastructure more resilient to climate change, population changes and extreme weather.
There are also individual projects aimed at improving resilience. For example, work at Camps Reservoir in Lanarkshire has been designed to improve the ability to draw down water when required and strengthen the local network.
The approach is therefore more about making the existing system stronger and more flexible rather than embarking on a huge programme of new reservoirs.
Water could become another infrastructure challenge
Britain has spent decades taking water supplies for granted.
Turn on the tap and clean water appears. The system is so reliable that most people rarely think about where that water came from, how it was stored or how much infrastructure was required to get it into the house.
Climate change is beginning to challenge that assumption.
England faces the more immediate and severe long-term supply problem and is responding with a mixture of demand reduction and major new supply projects, including reservoirs.
Scotland starts from a much stronger natural position. But that does not mean it can simply ignore the issue.
The challenge for Scotland will be to make sure that its abundant water resources remain reliably available in the right places and at the right times.
For Caithness and the wider Highlands, that may ultimately mean that the question is not whether Scotland has enough water.
It is whether we have invested enough in the pipes, reservoirs, treatment works and distribution networks to make sure that the water we have can actually get to the people and businesses that need it.
The water may be falling from the sky.
Getting it from there to the tap is the part that costs money.