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Water companies in England and Wales explore ‘surge pricing’ during drought
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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So, I agree that there is plenty of water available to the UK. But...you can't just wave away distribution and processing costs, either. Those are real. And it's in those services that there is scarcity, that there is cost to building out capacity.
Most people are after freshwater rather than saltwater, so you've either got to desalinate saltwater or draw from freshwater.
And most people care about the location of their water. Like, they want to turn the knob on their tap and have it come out there, not have a bunch of water at the beach.
If you want to go to the beach, you can collect all the saltwater you want, without restriction. And if you transport it home and want to desalinate it, you can run a small electric still yourself (not the most cost-effective way to desalinate at scale, but just to demonstrate that it's possible at an individual level). More or less, just an electric kettle plus a condenser. They're on Amazon in the US, and I expect also the UK. Your distilled water will be purer than what comes out of the tap from the water company.
But...the associated costs and hassle make buying water services to do distribution and processing preferable for most.
Without access to the actua or estimated costs at scale of providing free water, I can't tell you whether the distribution and processing costs cause scarcity. As I replied to someone else, there's no issue of scarcity when it comes to buying and upgrading weapons of mass destruction which cost £billions. I'd rather taxpayers' money spent on free water and energy rather than a bomb that sits in a silo never being used.