Waterscan: creating resilience by protecting a critical resource

Escalating demand for water, increasingly extreme weather patterns and an ageing UK water network mean it is more important than ever that businesses can manage this resource effectively.

Waterscan is a tech-enabled and ESG-focused water management consultancy. For more than three decades, the business has been pioneering new ways to help some of the UK’s biggest names across all sectors, including manufacturing, retail and hospitality to develop effective sustainable water management strategies and reduce their water footprint to build long term resilience.

Leveraging Waterline, its proprietary technology platform, and the expertise of its 75-strong team, Waterscan helps businesses turn water data into actionable insights. It focuses on creating tailored solutions for water procurement, identifying, managing and mitigating water risk, and providing strategic guidance to optimise water use and reduce costs.

Waterscan was instrumental in pioneering the UK’s self-supply water market, securing the first licence in 2017 following market deregulation, and in 2023-2024 saved its customers more than £12.5m in costs and 3.4bn litres of water. Waterscan has helped make collective savings of more than £45m for customers since market opening in 2017.

Reflecting LDC’s track record of investing in ambitious businesses at the forefront of the transition to a more sustainable economy and supporting sustainability-led value creation, LDC invested in Waterscan in 2024. This is helping the management team to implement an organic growth strategy underpinned by further investment in technology and consultancy services, as evidenced by the recent launch of Waterline 2.0.

Already, the partnership has enabled Waterscan to expand its specialist team, enhance its data and analytic capabilities to help its clients assess and manage water risks, set robust water reduction targets, and scale the reach of its Water Strategy platform – the UK’s first independent water retail solution.

In 2026, Waterscan secured funding through the UK’s first Water Efficiency Lab for its Workplace Water Wins project, which will install sub-metering across retail, hospitality and leisure sites to help businesses improve water efficiency.