Abstraction License

What is it?

Water is a precious commodity and the supply of water is limited, so in order to make sure that it is managed and used effectively to meet our needs and to sustain our natural environment the Environment Agency has a licensing system in place.

When is a licence required?

You probably need to apply for a licence if you want to store water or take more than 20 cubic metres (4,000 gallons) of water per day from an:

  • underground source
  • river or stream
  • reservoir, lake or pond
  • canal
  • spring

So this means you are entitled to drill a borehole on your land and extract up to 20,000 litres of water per day, free, with no licensing requirement?

We can help!

Waterseekers can guide you through the licensing requirements and application process on your behalf.
If your circumstances or requirement s change at some point in the future and your licence requires updating to reflect the changes, then we can help with that too.

To talk to us about an abstraction licence application please contact us.