Water efficiency has spent years as the quiet part of a Building Regulations submission — a fittings schedule, a calculation, a number under 125. That framing is getting harder to sustain.
What the Environment Agency published
On 21 August 2026 the Environment Agency published its weekly summary covering 14 to 20 August (GOV.UK). The headline numbers are worth reading properly:
- 71% of England by land area is in drought, with no change in area status that week.
- Reservoir storage for England was 62.6% on 18 August — down 3.4% in a single week, and 16.3% below average for the time of year. Seven major reservoirs are classed as exceptionally low.
- August rainfall to date was 17% of the long-term average for England, ranging from 5% in the south east to 33% in the north west.
- A quarter of monitored river sites are classed as exceptionally low, predominantly across southern and eastern England.
- Around 29 million people are under temporary use bans, after Affinity Water extended its ban to its eastern region on 17 August and Wessex Water went company-wide on 18 August.
- 1,562 restrictions on abstraction licences are in place, including mandatory Section 57 spray irrigation reductions in parts of East Anglia running to 31 October, cutting abstraction by 50% across 288 licences.
- 226 drought and dry-weather incidents have been confirmed since the start of 2026.
The National Drought Group was reconvened on 20 August and is now meeting weekly. This follows a July the Environment Agency has described as the driest in 190 years (EA blog, 12 August 2026).
Areas in drought now include East Anglia, Thames, Kent and South London, Hertfordshire and North London, Solent and South Downs, Wessex, the West Midlands, the East Midlands, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, and Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Four further areas are in prolonged dry weather.
Why this lands on your desk
Most of those catchments are exactly where housing is being delivered — and where water is already a live constraint on consent. Three connections matter.
Part G is moving. The current national standard is 125 litres per person per day, with a 110 l/p/d optional requirement available through planning conditions. Defra has consulted on tightening these to 105 and 100 l/p/d. Nothing in the drought changes the legal position today, but it does change the political weather around the response.
Local standards survived the NPPF rewrite. The August 2026 Framework confirms that local plans may apply the tighter Part G optional requirement where justified, and exceptionally a more stringent local standard in areas of serious water stress. That patchwork isn’t going away this autumn — if anything, expect more authorities to reach for it.
Water availability is being tested at application stage. New NPPF policies require plan-making to be informed by early engagement with water and wastewater providers on capacity, and several catchments already operate water neutrality or offsetting regimes. A scheme that clears Part G on paper can still stall on supply.
The practical version
If you’re producing water efficiency evidence this autumn, a few things are worth doing now rather than at discharge-of-conditions:
Check whether the authority has adopted the 110 l/p/d optional requirement, and whether a local plan policy goes further — don’t assume 125 is the target. Design to the standard you’re likely to be held to, not the one that was in force when the site was first appraised. Keep the fittings schedule and the calculation together in one auditable pack, because Building Control and the LPA are increasingly asking to see the same evidence. And if the site sits in a water neutrality or offsetting area, treat that as a separate workstream with its own lead time — it is not a Part G calculation with extra steps.
None of this is new regulation. It’s the same rules being applied in a much less forgiving environment.
Get the water calculation right first time
WaterMonkey runs the Part G water efficiency calculation in your browser — 125, 110 or a local standard — and gives you a fittings schedule you can hand straight to Building Control. One less thing to redo when the target moves.
Sources: GOV.UK — Dry weather and drought in England: 14 to 20 August 2026 · Environment Agency blog — managing abstraction, 12 August 2026 · Defra — Review of water efficiency standards in the Building Regulations