2026 is off to a very wet start. After weeks of heavy rain, overflowing rivers and all kinds of road and rail disruption across the country, it’s easy to fall into a false sense of security when it comes to drought: surely, it’s the last thing the UK needs to worry about? Reservoirs are looking healthier; gardens are starting to spring back to life and water scarcity feels like a problem for somewhere else… or some other time.

But let’s think back to just last summer.

A season filled with hosepipe bans. Warning headlines. Reservoirs at their lowest levels in years. Entire regions being told to prepare for restrictions as supplies struggled to keep up. It wasn’t a distant crisis or a worst-case scenario; it was everyday reality across large parts of the country.

That contrast is exactly the problem.

Because drought in the UK isn’t just about how much rain falls in a given month. It’s about how our water systems respond when conditions swing – as they increasingly do – between extremes. Recent rainfall doesn’t mean the risk has passed. It simply masks a deeper issue: our water infrastructure was designed for a climate, population and pattern of use that no longer exists.

What last summer showed us is that drought isn’t a future risk waiting patiently on the horizon. It’s a design flaw that reveals itself again and again. And one we already have the tools to fix.

The New Reality: Drought Isn’t ‘Future’, It’s Now

Not long ago – and certainly close enough to still be fresh in people’s minds – large parts of England were experiencing prolonged dry conditions. During summer 2025, several regions were formally classified as being in drought, reservoir storage fell well below seasonal norms and water companies introduced temporary use bans to manage demand and protect critical supplies.

At the peak of the dry period, average reservoir storage across England dropped to around two-thirds of capacity, with some individual areas significantly lower. The National Drought Group convened multiple times to coordinate cross-sector response, describing the situation at the time as a nationally significant water shortfall. For millions of households, drought moved from being a background risk to a lived reality, one that placed direct pressure on both customers and operational teams.

More recently, increased rainfall has eased some of that immediate pressure. Catchments have responded, river flows have improved and reservoirs have partially recovered. But this improvement shouldn’t be mistaken for resolution. What last summer demonstrated is how quickly the system can transition from operating within tolerance to operating under stress and how reliant we remain on favourable weather patterns to maintain balance.

This is the critical point. Drought in the UK isn’t simply a question of how dry a particular season becomes. It’s a question of system resilience: how effectively our water networks cope with extended dry periods, growing demand and increasing climate variability. Climate change is undeniably part of the picture – with hotter, drier summers and more erratic rainfall patterns becoming increasingly well evidenced – but it is not the only driver.

A more fundamental issue sits beneath it: the way water systems are designed and managed and the extent to which demand reduction is embedded at an infrastructure level rather than treated as a temporary response when conditions deteriorate.

Why Behaviour-Change-Only Approaches Aren’t Enough

When water shortages loom, the usual response is familiar: Save water at home! Take shorter showers! Don’t fill the paddling pool!

And to be fair, those behavioural efforts do help – every drop saved counts. But there’s a limit to this approach. Relying chiefly on public behaviour places the burden on homeowners and consumers. It works well as part of a broader strategy, but it can’t shoulder the weight of systemic demand reduction alone.

Government and industry strategies routinely include demand-management campaigns and leak reduction programmes, but the hard numbers show this isn’t sufficient. For instance:

• Average UK household water consumption still sits at over 136 litres per person per day.
• Despite ongoing public campaigns, leakage remains high – around 19% of water entering distribution is lost before it ever reaches a property.

And water companies themselves often acknowledge that behavioural change, while useful, is not a substitute for better infrastructure and system design.

Infrastructure-Level Demand Reduction: The Bigger Levers

If drought is a symptom, the real issue lies deeper: in how our water systems are designed, managed and upgraded.

One powerful lever too often overlooked is infrastructure-level demand reduction. Solutions that operate at scale, change how water flows through the system and reduce consumption without relying on changes in individual behaviour.

This shift is essential for two big reasons:

1. Scale: Small per-household savings multiply dramatically across millions of properties and connections.
2. Guaranteed Impact: Unlike awareness campaigns that depend on voluntary action, infrastructure measures deliver consistent results as part of system design.

Indeed, national water planning frameworks now explicitly recognise the need for demand reduction at scale – not just supply increases – to bridge a looming water deficit that, without action, could amount to around 5 billion litres per day by 2050, roughly one-third of current supply.

Where Groundbreaker’s LoFlo Delivers Immediate Impact and Future Trajectory

Enter Groundbreaker Systems’ LoFlo®. A deceptively simple but highly effective piece of engineering that proves demand reduction doesn’t need to be high-tech, high-cost or intrusive.

So, what does LoFlo actually do?

• It’s a low-profile flow regulator, installed at the property boundary or in-network, designed to reduce water consumption without affecting household pressure.
• Independent industry trials and field data show it can cut water consumption by up to 12%,  a significant impact when aggregated across thousands of connections.
• LoFlo installs quickly, with minimal disruption, and works passively, no customer behaviour change required.
• Because it fits alongside standard smart meter rollouts or exchanges, it enhances existing infrastructure programmes without duplicating effort.

That last point is crucial. Unlike behavioural campaigns that depend on consumer engagement – and the inevitable variation in response – LoFlo provides an infrastructure-level baseline reduction that utilities can count on year after year.

It’s not the only tool water companies could use but it is exactly the kind of solution that moves the needle when we start talking about designing demand out of the system, not just trying to persuade people to use less.

From Talk to Action: Rethinking Drought Resilience

Ultimately, drought resilience isn’t about waiting for the next dry spring and scrambling to hosepipe-ban our way through it. It’s about confronting the flawed assumptions baked into our systems:

• That voluntary behaviour change alone can bridge massive demand gaps.
• That expensive supply-side infrastructure must carry the burden of resilience.
• And that minor tweaks in messaging will somehow outweigh decades of under-investment and outdated network design.

We can change this. Not with starry-eyed solutions or pie-in-the-sky tech but with practical, scalable, and cost-effective engineering, the kind we’ve been innovating for over 25 years.

In a world where droughts will likely become more frequent and unpredictable, effective water management isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a foundational part of a resilient, equitable and sustainable society.

The great thing is that we already know this. And we have the tools available to act now – not tomorrow, not in 2050.

Find out more about LoFlo here.