More than 140 golf clubs in England have breached their water extraction licences in the past five years, according to data analysis by the Guardian. More than a third of these clubs were caught taking water illegally from the environment, either by taking more than permitted or by removing it outside of the permitted period. In most of the other cases, the breaches were the result of golf clubs that were either not reporting or monitoring their water usage properly, or were not reporting and monitoring it at all.
Although 100 of the golf clubs breached their licences in a way that put the environment at risk, none of the infringements have led to a prosecution or fine. Amy Fairman, head of campaigns at the campaign group River Action described the figures as “absolutely unacceptable”. Monitoring and enforcement must be significantly strengthened.” The Environment Agency (EA) told the Guardian that it had increased its ability to monitor and detect breaches of abstraction licences.
A spokesperson said: “Our first response is to work with abstractors to bring them back into compliance, however we won’t hesitate to take further action if necessary.” Over 70% of England is currently in drought after a summer of back-to-back heatwaves, which the Met Office has just declared to be the UK’s hottest on record. The previous record was set just last year. Nine major reservoirs are classed as having exceptionally low storage, and farmers have warned that the drought could lead to food shortages.
The Guardian obtained the data, which covers the period from 2021 to 2025, from the EA via an environmental information request (EIR). The overall number of breaches has more than doubled in that time, likely largely due to the digitisation of records and improved monitoring. Over the five-year period, golf clubs breached their licences 279 times, accounting for around 6% of the total breaches.
Of these, 175 were category 2 or 3 breaches meaning that they posed the threat of a “reasonably foreseeable” impact on the environment, human health or quality of life. Although the figures do not relate to the 2026 drought, they do include breaches that occurred during the droughts of 2022 and 2025. Fairman said: “As we face increasingly climate stressed conditions, we need to look at who is prioritised to extract our water and that should be essential services, not golf clubs.
Demand and competition for water is going to increase so the government needs to take this issue really seriously and put in place a national plan for water resilience.” In England, the removal of water from rivers, lakes and boreholes in the ground is governed by a system of abstraction licences, held by public water companies, farmers and many other businesses. The licences place conditions on where, when and how much water businesses can remove, as well as how they must monitor and report their usage. Dr Megan Klaar, an associate professor in hydroecology at the University of Leeds, told the Guardian that breaches of abstraction licences are “bad news for the environment”.
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