2.1 Household use of water

Table 1 shows information about the domestic use of water in the UK. The left-hand column of the table lists the main ways in which water is used, and the right-hand column indicates the average amount of water used each day for each person in the UK.

Of course, these figures are estimates rather than precisely measured amounts. The water supply companies have no way of keeping track of how the tens of millions of households use all of the water that they supply. They base their estimates on surveys of a range of different types of households, carried out over extended periods of time to allow for seasonal variations, and they use the survey results to estimate typical values for the whole population. So it shouldn’t be surprising if your use of water doesn’t correspond to the pattern shown in Table 1 – you are not necessarily a ‘typical’ water user!

Table 1 gives data only for domestic water use; commercial and industrial use of the mains supply is excluded.