Watering From a Well, a Burn, or a Borehole: The Rules That Apply in Scotland

Two different sets of rules cover garden water that does not come from a mains pipe. If your house runs on a borehole, spring or stream-fed tank, the supply is regulated by your council, not by SEPA. If you want to take new water from a burn, river, loch or borehole to irrigate, that is regulated by SEPA, and almost every garden or allotment volume needs no application at all.

Private water supplies

What counts as one

A private water supply is any drinking-water supply not provided by Scottish Water: a borehole, a spring, a well, or an intake from a loch or stream, typically serving a single household, a small group of properties or a rural business. Approximately 3% of the Scottish population uses one, and many more people meet one in holiday accommodation in remoter parts of Scotland. If your household water comes this way, the garden and greenhouse taps almost certainly draw from the same supply.

Who regulates it

Local authorities carry the day-to-day statutory duties, including keeping a register of every private water supply in their area. The 2006 Regulations divide supplies into two types. A Type A supply provides on average 10 or more cubic metres of water a day or serves 50 or more people, or is used for a commercial or public activity. Type B is every other private supply, which in practice means most single-household domestic supplies. Larger and commercial supplies are also covered by the Water Intended for Human Consumption (Private Supplies) (Scotland) Regulations 2017, which set quality standards, risk assessment and monitoring. The council's environmental health department is the point of contact for registering a supply, having it risk assessed and arranging testing, and it is the place to ask whether a private supply already exists near a burn or loch you are considering, since DWQR no longer publishes a map of supply locations.

The Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland (DWQR) sits above that. It does not run supplies or regulate households directly: it verifies that regulations are complied with and checks that councils are meeting their duties.

What owning or using one involves

For an owner or user the duties can include registering the supply, maintaining the equipment, treating the water so it is safe to use and reporting problems. Anyone relying on a private supply also needs to plan how to get water in an emergency such as a drought or storm, and the council's environmental health department is the place to start for advice.

Hosepipe bans and Water Shortage Orders

A hosepipe ban is imposed by a water undertaker on its own customers, so it does not reach a private supply. Scotland's mechanism is different: Scottish Ministers can make a Water Shortage Order under Part 7 of the Water Resources (Scotland) Act 2013, on a proposal from Scottish Water when there is a serious deficiency or threat of one. An order can impose water saving measures on persons it specifies and can restrict or prohibit abstraction by any person from sources it names, with an offence for failing to comply. A private supply user is therefore not placed beyond a Water Shortage Order by the type of supply alone. The hosepipe ban rules guide sets out how the two regimes differ and how SEPA's separate water-scarcity scale works.

Drought also bites on a physical level that no law touches. A spring, borehole or stream-fed supply has its own limits and can run low in a dry summer. Cutting demand helps whatever the supply, and the guides to general watering technique and hot-weather and heatwave watering cover how.

Using untreated water on food crops

The drinking-water rules do not settle whether it is safe to water vegetables, salad or soft fruit from an untreated source. Surface waters (rivers, burns, lochs) pose a high risk for fresh produce irrigation, from wildlife, livestock, sewage and discharges, and rainfall increases contamination through sediment disturbance and sewer overflows. Shallow boreholes and wells can be safe but are more prone to contamination than deeper sources. Mains water is considered the safest source for irrigation. This is not a legal barrier on a domestic plot, but it is a food-safety consideration: avoid abstracting during or immediately after flooding, and treat the risk as higher for leafy crops eaten raw than for anything cooked. If you can, water the soil rather than the leaves, and use mains or stored rainwater for crops eaten raw late in the season.

Taking new water from a burn, river, loch or groundwater

Everything above concerns a household that already has a private supply. Running a hose or pipe straight into a burn, river, loch or borehole to water a garden or allotment is a new abstraction, taking water directly from the water environment. It is regulated separately by SEPA under environmental, not drinking-water, law.

The current framework: EASR

Water abstraction is authorised under the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (EASR). Until November 2025 this sat under the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011, widely known as CAR. The 2025 Amendment Regulations brought water activities into EASR from 1 November 2025, so "CAR" in older guidance is the predecessor of the current rules.

The three tiers

Abstraction from coastal waters is a separate category and does not apply to inland garden or allotment irrigation.

What the under-10m³ rule requires

Under 10m³ a day, no application or registration is needed: the activity is authorised as long as you meet the rule's conditions. You must have a means of demonstrating the abstraction is under 10m³ in any one day, either by measuring or because the equipment cannot draw more. Pipework, tanks and other equipment must be kept in good repair. And the abstraction point must not be within 50 metres of an existing well, spring or borehole used for a water supply, because a new abstraction sunk too close can draw down or contaminate the source somebody else depends on. If you cannot comply, you need a different type of authorisation. Breaching the conditions, or abstracting above 10m³ a day without registering, is an offence, so this is not a purely self-certified system.

If the burn or loch has extra protection (a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Special Area of Conservation, or a river with protected salmon or freshwater pearl mussel populations, for instance), extra requirements can apply. NatureScot's SiteLink tool lets you check whether a site carries one of these designations before you start.

What 10,000 litres a day means for a garden

For almost every garden or allotment this is reassurance, not a compliance burden. Ten cubic metres is 10,000 litres:

• A standard watering can of 9 to 10 litres: around 1,000 full cans.
• A hose delivering 15 to 20 litres a minute (a typical figure, worth checking against your own by timing it filling a bucket): about 8 to 11 hours of continuous running.

Hand-watering, a hose or a sprinkler on a domestic plot, even used generously in a heatwave, sits nowhere near that. The registration and permit tiers exist for agricultural-scale irrigation, industry and hydropower. The 10 to 50m³ registration costs a one-off £198.55 (form R-WAT-C1), with conditions on measuring, equipment and not harming other groundwater abstractions or fish.

Does the exemption hold in a drought?

Under SEPA's water scarcity process, yes. At Significant Water Scarcity, those abstracting up to 10m³ a day under a General Binding Rule may continue to do so, and SEPA is not considering suspending registration-level authorisations for abstractions of up to 50m³ a day. SEPA's process is separate from a Water Shortage Order, which Ministers can use to restrict abstraction from named sources. SEPA publishes a weekly status for each catchment, so it is possible to check where your area stands.

Sinking a well or borehole for irrigation

Constructing a new borehole or well for irrigation has its own General Binding Rule, separate from the abstraction one. A well or borehole not deeper than 200 metres and abstracting under 10m³ a day is covered if the construction prevents mixing of groundwaters of different chemical composition, is not within 50 metres of an existing well or borehole without the owner's consent, and is backfilled or sealed when no longer needed. If the conditions are met, no registration is required.

England's threshold is different

In England the Environment Agency's threshold is 20m³ a day, not SEPA's 10m³. They are separate regimes under separate regulators, so the English figure is no substitute for the Scottish one.

Common questions

Sources