Water Shortages Don’t Have to Block New Homes — If We Build the Infrastructure First
This weekend, the Telegraph reported that water companies have warned Government that England only has water supplies to support 420,000 of the 1.5 million new homes promised by 2030. Water UK says the planning system for water infrastructure is broken, reservoir construction is tangled in red tape, and demand from data centres and a changing climate is outpacing official forecasts.
Nowhere is this clearer than in our own region. The Environment Agency has warned that water supplies around Cambridge are under extreme stress — opposing thousands of new homes and even a new cancer hospital on that basis alone.
We agree the situation is urgent. But the answer to a water shortage is not to stop building. It is to build the water infrastructure this region should have had decades ago.
Infrastructure first
That is why a new reservoir sits at the core of the Forest City plan — a 1,600-acre reservoir designed to serve not only Forest City’s residents but the wider region. We are not proposing homes and hoping the water follows. We are proposing a city built around its own water supply from day one, easing the pressure that is currently blocking homes, businesses, and hospitals across Cambridgeshire and beyond.
England has not completed a major new reservoir in over three decades, while its population has grown by millions. The consequences of that failure are now arriving all at once. Every year of delay makes the constraint tighter and the cost higher.
The choice facing the region is simple: continue rationing a shrinking supply between homes, hospitals, and industry — or expand the supply. Forest City chooses to expand it.
We would welcome the opportunity to work with Government, the Environment Agency, and local water companies to accelerate delivery. As Water UK notes, most of the fix doesn’t require new legislation. It requires the will to build.
Albion City Development Corporation
Source: The Telegraph — Water shortages to derail plans for one million new homes
Learn more about Forest City’s water and infrastructure plans.