“Reclaim the rain” urges Parliamentary Committee

Photo of a water level control installed for Littleport & Downham IDB through the Defra funded LAPSIP programme.

On 22 May 2026 the House of Lords Environment & Climate Change Committee published it’s inquiry into drought management in England. The Committee’s report “Surviving drought: reclaim the rain” calls for urgent action to improve drought planning and monitoring, invest in water storage infrastructure at all scales, reform abstraction licensing to increase flexibility, and engage in a whole of society approach to reducing water demand.

England is on course for a public water supply deficit of 5 billion litres a day by 2055. Without mitigation, drought will grow as a real and regular threat to our society.

The report stresses that England is “not short of rain” but fails to store and manage it effectively. To improve rainfall capture and storage it recommends investment in both major reservoirs and distributed local storage infrastructure across agricultural and urban landscapes.

In the report the Committee repeatedly emphasises that systems designed only to remove water quickly can worsen long-term water scarcity. Like ADA they encourage a more integrated approach to flood–drought management rather than treating flood, drainage, and drought planning separately.

The Committee argues that England’s lowland water systems need to shift from a narrow focus on drainage and flood evacuation toward integrated water retention, storage, and reuse. Retaining water safely both in the landscape and networks of small-scale reservoirs. They foresee an expand role for internal drainage boards (IDBs) beyond traditional land drainage and flood defence to include broader water resource management and drought resilience functions.

The Committee says IDBs should help manage water retention, storage, and local supply, especially in lowland agricultural catchments. Moving water to local stores and reservoirs, particularly during periods of high flows when water is currently pumped out to sea. They recommend that the Government amend legislation to expand the remit of IDBs beyond drainage to include wider water resource management.

The report argues that fragmented governance currently weakens drought preparedness. The Committee want to see a strengthening of local water governance by clarifying responsibilities between IDBs, water companies, the Environment Agency, local authorities and water abstractor groups. Empowering local abstractors and IDBs to develop local resource options, such as:

• small-scale reservoirs,
• water retention schemes,
• managed recharge,
• farm storage, and
• catchment-scale water sharing arrangements.

The Committee also wants to see nature-based solutions, such as restoring wetlands and peatlands, slowing water flows, and increasing soil water retention wherever these can provide a dual-purpose for both flood mitigation and drought resilience.

Elsewhere in the report the Committee recommends developing better drought monitoring and data sharing that would support earlier intervention in catchments vulnerable to both flooding and water scarcity. Modernising and streamlining drought permitting and abstraction processes, including specifying the date by which it plans to move abstraction licensing into the Environmental Permitting Regime (EPR). And giving statutory authority to Regional Water Resource Groups, with Government setting clear guidelines on how they should involve abstractors like industry and agriculture in multi-sector water resource planning.

ADA provided written evidence and case studies to the Committee. Experts who gave evidence to the Committee in person included both Andrew Newton, Chief Executive of the Ely Group of IDBs, and Dr Mark Betson, National Water Resources Specialist for the NFU.

The official committee announcement and report summary are available via committees.parliament.uk.

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