National Framework for Water Resources: Current and future non-public water supply demands

asNeeded

Current non-public water demands are collated from the Environment Agency's internal WRGIS dataset that takes an average of 2016-2021 licence returns data from the National Abstraction Licensing Database (NALD). Non public water analysis for the National Framework excludes licences that fall in coastal, tidal, estuary water bodies and excludes navigation licenses as they are not fully represented in WRGIS. Demands are presented at national (England) and water resource regional group (Water Resources South East, Water Resources East, Water Resources West, Water Resources North, West Country Water & Environment) scale. Water Resources West regional group non-public water demand data does not include Welsh non-public water demands. Future (2050s) non-public water demands are estimated taking current demands (as per above) and applying a range of growth factors to key sectors that make up >60% of non-public water demands (spray irrigation, livestock, horticulture, power, food and drink, chemicals and paper and pulp) and collating other quantitative information on future non-public water demands where available. Growth factors used are taken from the Environment Agency's first National Framework for Water Resources published in 2020. Third party data includes growth factors taken from Water Resources South East regional plan for paper and pulp industry and future estimates of carbon capture storage and hydrogen taken from AECOM's report as produced for the National Framework for Water Resources (June 2025). All demands presented are consumptive water demands, based on consumptive factors from WRGIS (taken themselves from RAMS/CAMS ledgers). This reflects water that is taken from the environment and fully used; many non-public water users abstract water and return it fully to the environment - this demand is considered to be non-consumptive. Demands estimated from WRGIS/current datasets do not include any new demands or new abstractions that are not already in our licensing system.