The UK's water industry has warned that there will not be enough water to support the government's plans for datacentre growth, calling ministers' AI expansion strategy "fatally flawed" because it fails to account for the huge cooling demands of new facilities. In a written briefing to MPs, trade body Water UK said government policies on AI growth zones, AI for science and the AI opportunities action plan make no mention of water, and that the Environment Agency's latest national water resources framework also excludes datacentre demand, despite England already facing forecast supply shortfalls.

Water UK said more than three-quarters of the UK's datacentres are in the water-stressed south and east of England, where millions of people are currently under hosepipe bans, and that further expansion there "may be impossible" without policy changes. Datacentres in England already use an estimated 6.6 million litres of drinking water daily, a figure Water UK says could nearly triple to 19.8 million litres if the government meets its goal of tripling datacentre capacity by 2030; in Slough, which has the highest concentration of datacentres, some facilities have requested up to 3 million litres a day, comparable to 3,500 homes, while building new reservoirs can take up to 15 years.