- Drinking Water 2025 – Summary of the Chief Inspector’s report for drinking water in England
- Foreword
- Water supplies and testing
- Compliance with water quality standards
- Learning from microbiological failures
- Learning from turbidity failures
- Learning from chemical, taste and odour failures
- Learning from pesticide failures
- Asset health and service reservoir integrity
- Consumer contacts
- Drinking water quality events
- Water safety planning and risk assessment
- Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
- Audit programme completed by the Inspectorate
- Air valve audits
- Enforcement, transformation and recommendations
- Materials in contact with drinking water (regulation 31)
- Security and Emergency Measures Direction - SEMD
- Network and Information Systems - NIS
- Research publications
- Whistleblowers
- Working with stakeholders
- Annex A – Number of tests carried out by companies
- Annex B – Compliance with standards
- Annex C – Compliance failures and events
Water supplies and testing
Introduction
Drinking Water 2025 is the annual publication of the Chief Inspector of Drinking Water for England and Wales. It is the 36th report of the work of the Inspectorate and presents the summary information about drinking water quality for the calendar year of 2025. It is published as an interim report and a final summary report, which covers public water supplies, and a single report, which covers private water supplies. This report is the summary of public water supplies for England. The industry dashboard for England 2025 is shown in summary below:
Figure 1 – Water industry compliance dashboard
Set out in this report are the key facts about the quality of the public water supplies in England, which is served by 24 water companies delivering supplies to 59.74 million consumers.
Key facts
| Public supply key fact | Statistics |
|---|---|
| Number of water companies | 24 |
| Population supplied | 59.74 |
| Water supplied (L/day) | 14.48bn |
| Treatment works | 989 |
| Service reservoirs | 3626 |
| Water supply zones | 2111 |
| Length of mains pipe (km) | 322.38k |
| Surface sources | 1,184 |
| Groundwater sources | 976 |
| Mixed water sources | 241 |
Key facts for private water supplies
| Private supply key fact | Statistics |
|---|---|
| Population supplied | 818,213 |
| Water supplied (M3/day) | 330,970 |
| Number of supplies | 34,102 |
| Number of local authorities with private supplies | 219 |
| Sources without a risk assessment | 3,119 |
Inset appointments
| Company code | Water supply zones | Volume supplied (l/day) | Population supplied |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALB | 2 | 168,000 | 3,000 |
| ALE | 1 | 40,000 | 500 |
| ESP | 39 | 1,699,000 | 13,000 |
| ICW | 132 | 5,150,000 | 89,568 |
| IWN | 212 | 43,924,434 | 318,293 |
| LNW | 99 | 13,402,000 | 103,000 |
| MTX | 1 | 74,000 | 454 |
| MUA | 13 | 18,079 | 411 |
| VWP | 1 | 5,900,000 | 17,292 |
| Total | 500 | 70,775,513 | 545,518 |