Trump-licking billionaire fills private lake in Wiltshire with tanker water while hosepipe bans leave households parched
Furious locals brand it “one rule for them, another for us” as convoys of tankers drain supplies—sparking fresh scandal for Britain’s crisis-hit utilities
Britons struggling under yet another hosepipe ban have been left furious after it emerged that tankers have been secretly ferrying huge amounts of water to the luxury estate of one of the world’s richest men—to help fill his new lake.
Residents in Hampshire, already subject to strict drought orders, say they have witnessed convoys of trucks, day and night, siphoning water from standpipes—the very same network ordinary households are barred from touching.
Trump fanboy
The deliveries were bound for Conholt Park, a 2,500-acre estate in Wiltshire owned by American billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, a fanboy of Donald Trump and the head of investment giant Blackstone.
Schwarzman, worth more than £30 billion, snapped up the historic shooting estate for £80 million in 2022 and has since overseen a vast redevelopment, including the construction of a lake. His representatives admit that water tankers were indeed used to help fill it, but insist it was all done legally through “licensed providers”.
Local anger
Legal or not, residents are angry. “It's incredibly outrageous,” fumed local Trevor Marshall. Lawrence Leask, an air-conditioning inspector has been documenting the tankers’ movements said: “We think there have been over 30 tankers a day, seven days a week. That's a lot of water. I worked out that 30 tankers means a million litres a day, something like that”. This has been happening for months.
Southern Water, the utility responsible for more than two million customers in the region, has now stepped in, ordering an immediate halt to the extractions. Managing director Tim McMahon said he was “appalled” by what had happened and promised a full review of loopholes that allowed it ensuring “this cannot happen again”.
Ongoing water scandals
But Southern Water admitted it has no clear idea how much was taken, beyond acknowledging a “significant” spike in usage in recent weeks.
The episode adds to the growing string of water scandals engulfing Britain’s troubled utilities. From sewage spills blighting beaches to leaky pipes wasting billions of litres, public trust in water companies is already at rock bottom. Many see this latest debacle as proof of a broken system that bends over backwards for the wealthy while households are lectured on saving every drop.
Blackstone, in a statement, described suggestions of wrongdoing as “false and misleading”. It insisted the estate had acted “with extraordinary care” and that much of the water was sourced from outside the region.
Yet critics say that is beside the point. At a time when ordinary families cannot even hose down their gardens or top up paddling pools, the sight of convoys of trucks fuelling a billionaire’s vanity project smacks of double standards.