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Under the Private Water Supplies (England) Regulations 2016, a local authority must carry out a risk assessment for every private water supply in its area and review and update it every five years, or earlier if it considers the existing assessment inadequate. The risk assessment must establish whether there is a risk of supplying water that would constitute a potential danger to human health. There is a significant carve-out for single homes, dealt with below.

The duties land on the relevant person, which section 80 of the Water Industry Act 1991 defines as the owner or occupier of the premises supplied, the owner or occupier of the premises where the source is situated even if that lies outside the local authority's area, and any other person exercising powers of management or control over the source. As the DWI points out, that means there can easily be more than one relevant person for a single supply, which is exactly why shared supplies generate disputes.

Enforcement has teeth. Where the local authority determines that a supply presents a potential danger to human health it must serve an enforcement notice on one or more relevant persons, and failure to comply with a notice is an offence subject to a fine or a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years, or both. Where water fails a standard without being a danger to health, or the supply is insufficient, a different notice may be served under section 80 of the Water Industry Act 1991. Local authorities may also charge the relevant person to recover the reasonable cost of carrying out these duties.

This is the gap that catches households out. The regulations in England and Wales do not require mandatory monitoring at a supply serving a single dwelling unless the local authority is requested to do so by the owner or occupier, although authorities may monitor such supplies at their discretion. The same applies to risk assessment: it is not required for supplies serving only single dwellings used exclusively for domestic purposes unless the owner or occupier, including a tenant, asks for one.

Where monitoring is requested, the DWI says the parameters normally tested as a minimum are conductivity, enterococci, E. coli, hydrogen ion as pH value, and turbidity, with other tests added according to any risk the authority identifies. Both the testing and the risk assessment are chargeable and cost-recoverable by the local authority. If a risk assessment carried out on request identifies a potential danger to human health, the authority will usually go on to sample the supply.

The limits of testing are worth understanding before you rely on a certificate. The DWI's own caution is that a test result at any given time is not necessarily representative of water quality at all other times, because quality varies with seasonal changes in the source and with how well any treatment copes under those conditions, and that the risk a test can reveal is bounded by the parameters chosen. That is precisely why it recommends a risk assessment as well: it helps select the right parameters and exposes the routes by which contamination actually arrives. Treatment, it adds, must be suitable for the worst case the risk assessment identifies.

Most domestic boreholes fall inside an abstraction exemption rather than needing a licence. Section 27 of the Water Resources Act 1991 provides that the restriction on abstraction does not apply to abstraction of a quantity of water not exceeding 20 cubic metres in any period of 24 hours, provided the abstraction does not form part of a continuous operation, or a series of operations, by which more than 20 cubic metres in aggregate is abstracted during that period. The exemption is about quantity, so a supply serving several properties or a business can outgrow it.

A new supply cannot simply be switched on. Regulation 13 of the Private Water Supplies (England) Regulations 2016 states that a private water supply must not be brought into use or used until the local authority is satisfied that it does not constitute a potential danger to human health, and that where an authority becomes aware of a supply used for the first time, or for the first time after twelve months or more out of use, the risk assessment, monitoring and related requirements must be complied with as soon as reasonably practicable. Registration itself is not currently a legal requirement, but the DWI strongly advises it, and notes that once aware of a supply the authority has powers under the Water Industry Act 1991 to gain entry and gather information.

LokalMatch is how you reach the people who do this work. Describe the job once — whether you need a borehole drilled, a pump repaired or replaced, treatment installed or a supply investigated, along with your postcode — and well contractors covering your area get in touch with you. They pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch drills nothing, does not set prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend any contractor, so asking how a new supply will be commissioned, and telling your local authority about it, are still yours to do.

Buying a house with a borehole or spring makes you a relevant person, with all the duties that follow, so the DWI advises prospective buyers to check the property deeds for legally binding agreements with other parties about responsibility for the control and maintenance of the supply, and to take legal advice on how those read and on potential liability if a quality or sufficiency problem arises later.

Its suggested questions are a practical survey in themselves: whether any deeds or agreements, formal or customary, set out who maintains and operates the whole supply or parts of it; whether the local authority has already carried out a risk assessment, when, and with what outcome; whether improvement works were required and whether the risks have since been remedied; what previous sampling by the authority found; whether there is treatment in the property such as filters or UV disinfection, whether it is appropriate, effective and compliant, and whether the UV unit is designed for drinking water and correctly sized; whether maintenance logs exist; and whether there have been taste, odour, discolouration or sufficiency problems.

One distinction decides how much regulatory comfort you inherit. A supply serving two or more dwellings or other properties must be risk assessed every five years and tested regularly by the local authority, so there is usually a file to read. A supply to a single dwelling used purely domestically may never have been assessed or tested at all, so the absence of bad news is not evidence of good water. In Scotland the picture differs again: the Scottish Government funds local councils to deliver a private water supply grant scheme to help eligible people improve an existing private supply, which is worth checking before budgeting for improvement works.