Scotland’s tap water ‘among best in the world’ but improvement still required

Scotland’s drinking water remains “amongst the best in the world” but improvement is required to reduce avoidable incidents, a regulator has said.

A report from the Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland said just under 99.9% of tests on drinking water in 2025 met regulatory standards.

However, it said a rise in avoidable incidents and complaints about discoloured water shows further improvements are needed to maintain public confidence.

David Reynolds, the Drinking Water Quality Regulator, said: “Whilst consumers can remain confident that Scotland’s drinking water is safe and of a very high quality, too many short-lived incidents that affect customers could have been prevented, and that’s an area where I need to see real improvement.

“Consumers rightly expect their tap water to look, taste and smell good. While the vast majority receive excellent quality drinking water every day, incidents of discoloured water continue to affect some customers.

“Addressing this issue is important to maintaining public trust and confidence in Scotland’s drinking water supplies.”

The report, Drinking Water Quality in Scotland 2025, said 137,947 regulatory tests were carried out on samples taken from consumers’ taps, and 99.88% of these met the required standards.

This is a slight reduction in performance compared to 2024.

Scottish Water received 17,558 complaints from consumers about the quality of their drinking water in 2025, which was a 5% increase on 2024.

Most of these complaints were related to discoloured water.

The number of water quality incidents requiring detailed investigation by the regulator during 2025 was 36, up from 34 the previous year and a figure it said was too high.