Britain's New Data Centres Are Being Built Where There Is Already No Water

September 11, 2026

Illustration of a scorched suburban garden with a hosepipe labelled Banned and a huge data centre beyond the fence with a water pipe running into it

In August, twenty seven million people in England were told not to use a hosepipe. Not to fill a paddling pool, not to wash the car, not to keep a lawn alive through the worst of it. Seventy one per cent of the country was officially in drought.

Reservoirs that normally sit behind a wall of trees were showing their mud and their shopping trolleys, and the water companies sent everyone a letter about it, in the tone of a headteacher who is not angry, just disappointed.

Somewhere within a short drive of most of those twenty seven million people, a large grey shed was quietly getting through 1.5 million litres of water a day. Nobody sent the shed a letter. Nobody had to. The shed is under no obligation to tell anyone what it uses, and the people who own the shed would quite like it to go to the front of the queue next time.

I have lived abroad long enough to have become the sort of person who says "back home" and then explains something ridiculous to a table of Finns, who nod politely and wonder why anybody would run a country that way.

This is the most ridiculous one yet. Britain has spent the summer rationing water to households while approving, at speed, an industry that drinks more of it than the households do, in the same places, at the same time and has decided that this is the future.

The sheds are data centres. The water is for cooling. And the part that should genuinely annoy you is not the water. It is the paperwork, or rather the complete absence of it.

Ink and watercolour illustration of a cracked dry reservoir bed with an abandoned shopping trolley and a data centre on the skyline, labelled No Hosepipes — Somewhere in here, a room full of computers is having a nicer summer than you are.

The summer the taps got strict

It is worth remembering how the ban actually landed, because it landed politely and everybody complied. The letters came in July. The usual list followed. No hosepipes, no sprinklers, no pressure washers, no filling the pool for the kids. Watering cans were fine, which is how a nation of garden sheds rediscovered the watering can and the specific ache in the forearm that comes with it.

And people did comply. That is the thing about the small ask in Britain. Tell twenty seven million people to stop washing the car and they will stop washing the car, and then stand in the drive looking at the car, feeling briefly and pointlessly virtuous. We are enormously good at the small ask. It is the large ask, the one aimed at somebody with a lobbyist and a planning consultant, that never seems to get sent.

While the letters were going out, the drought was declared across roughly half of England and the government was being asked, in public, whether it might pause the rollout of the one industry whose entire business model depends on the thing that had just run out. It said no.

Fact box

84% of proposed UK data centres are going into water-stressed areas.

The figure comes from an analysis of planning proposals published in April 2026. A single large facility can draw 1.5 million litres a day, roughly the domestic supply of a town of ten thousand people. Operators are not currently required to disclose how much they actually use.

How much water are we actually talking about

A single large facility can use 1.5 million litres in a day. That is the daily domestic supply of a town of ten thousand people, which is to say a decent English market town with a Greggs and a Wetherspoons and a bypass that everyone complains about. All of it, every day, gone into a cooling loop so that somebody in California can ask a chatbot to write a limerick about a cat.

The water goes in to cool the racks and a good deal of it goes out as vapour, which is the polite engineering term for evaporating a market town into the sky. Some designs recycle. Many do not.

Illustration of a data hall with rows of server racks and a single dripping garden tap, labelled 1.5 million litres a day — A market town's worth of water, on its way through.

And because there is no requirement to publish the figures, the only way to know which sort you have got at the end of the bypass is to ask, and the only people who can make them answer are the people who just said no to a pause.

Eighty four per cent of the data centres proposed in the UK are planned for areas already classed as water stressed. Not areas that might one day become water stressed. Areas where the water is already short, which is precisely how a place ends up under a hosepipe ban in the first place. It is as if the industry looked at a map of where the drought was and decided that was where the customers were.

Woman in an athletic heather Certified Fan of Facts t-shirt in a back garden — For when somebody at the barbecue explains that it rained last week, so there is no drought.
Shirt: Certified Fan of Facts · £25.95

Nobody has to tell you

Here is the bit that should be a scandal and is instead a footnote. Data centre operators in the UK are under no obligation to publish their water consumption. Not one figure. You can find out how much your neighbour's allotment uses more easily than you can find out how much the building at the end of the bypass uses, because your neighbour has a meter and a bill and a tendency to mention it.

So when the ban lands and you are standing in a brown garden with the watering can, there is no public number you can look up to find out whether the sacrifice was worth anything. There might not be a number at all. Nobody is counting, and the people who could make them count have decided that counting would put the investment off.

The House of Lords, not a body given to radicalism, has recommended that water companies be made statutory consultees on major planning decisions, including data centres, so that somebody with a reservoir in their care at least gets to say something before the concrete goes in. That is where we are. The upper house of Parliament is asking whether the water company could perhaps be told.

You can find out how much your neighbour’s allotment uses more easily than you can find out how much the building at the end of the bypass uses.

Five caricatured Reform voter types lined up against a gold background, one circled in red

9 questions · 7 types

Which Reform voter is your nemesis?

There’s nowhere to hide. Find out which of the seven types you’d least like to be stuck with in a Wetherspoons and get £5 off your first order.

Take the quiz

And they would like to go first

This is the part I had to read twice. In 2026 the trade body for the sector floated the idea that data centres should be treated as critical infrastructure during heatwaves and hosepipe bans. Critical infrastructure gets priority. Priority means that when there is not enough water to go round, the sheds keep cooling and you keep not filling the paddling pool.

The argument is that the servers cannot be allowed to overheat, which is true, in the way that it is also true that the tomatoes cannot be allowed to die. The difference is who gets to make the argument and where.

You make yours to the lawn. They make theirs to the minister.

The Green Party asked for a moratorium on large new approvals in August, on the grounds that the country was visibly running out of the thing these buildings need most. The government rejected it, on the grounds that a pause would send investment and jobs somewhere else. Both of those are arguments. Only one of them was made by people who had just been told to stop washing the car.

What this is actually about

It is not really about water. It is about who gets asked. Twenty seven million people were asked politely, by letter and they complied. An industry using orders of magnitude more was not asked, does not have to say and has put in a request to be first in the queue next time. That is not an environmental story. That is a story about which end of the country the letters get sent to.

Britain is very good at the small ask. Turn the tap off while you brush. Take the bags. Use the smaller bin. Sort the recycling into the correct one of four boxes, then find out the council sends it all to the same place anyway.

We do it. We are, if anything, slightly proud of doing it. And every one of those asks is aimed downwards, at the person with the watering can, because the person with the watering can does not have a planning consultant.

Illustration of a doormat with a small pile of water company letters and a pair of muddy wellies, labelled The Small Ask — Every ask, delivered to the same address.

There is a version of this that ends well. It involves disclosure, which costs nothing, and it involves the water company being in the room when the decision is made, which the Lords have already suggested. Neither of those is a ban on data centres. Both of them are the sort of thing that would already be law if the industry in question were run by allotment holders.

Illustration of a tin watering can alone on a scorched brown lawn, labelled National Policy — The instrument of national policy.

What to do with this

Water the tomatoes with the washing up bowl, because it genuinely does help and because it annoys the right people. Then find out what is being built within ten miles of you. Planning applications are public, the water figures are not and the gap between those two facts is the whole argument.

Woman in a red I Think Therefore I Am Not a Reform Voter t-shirt in a park — For the neighbour who says the drought is a myth and the shed is jobs.
Shirt: I Think Therefore I Am Not a Reform Voter · £25.95

Ask the council how much water it has been promised. You are allowed to ask. They may not know, which is its own answer. That is roughly the whole of British democracy in one sentence, and it works slightly more often than you would think.