Scottish Water has lost enough water to fill almost 7,000 Olympic swimming pools in a single month amid fears over soaring leakage.

The revelation comes after Scottish Water announced it was raising prices for consumers during the cost-of-living crisis.

Statistics reveal that Scottish Water recorded the highest leakage for more than three years in December, with a total leakage of 558.7 million litres per day.

An Olympic swimming pool required 2.5 million litres to be filled, meaning the water lost in December could fill 6,927 swimming pools.

Scottish Water has pointed to the daily water leakage reducing by almost 60% since 2006 when the figure was at 1,100 million litres per day.

In December 2022, the north Scotland region lost 47.2 million litres per day, the east region had 105.3 million litres per day, the west of Scotland recorded 229.7 million litres of leakage per day and the south had 176.5 million litres per day.

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Scottish Water has put the spike in leakage down to “a surge of burst pipes and leaks as sub-zero temperatures turned into a rapid thaw”.

In November 2022, the total leakage was 459.1 million litres per day and in October last year, the number was 447.5 million litres per day.

Scottish Conservative shadow secretary for net zero, energy and transport, Douglas Lumsden, said: “It is quite extraordinary that Scottish Water lost enough water in a month to fill the equivalent of nearly 7,000 Olympic swimming pools.

“These findings come against a backdrop of the SNP quango announcing they were hiking prices for customers during a cost-of-living crisis.

“It will leave a bitter taste with people, especially when they claim to have reduced leakage levels by over 100 million litres a day.

“The public will be appalled by this level of waste and Scottish Water should come clean and explain what steps they are taking to resolve these issues.”

Scottish Water have said it has brought down leakage to 459 million litres per day and that the company is continuing to target leakage.

But in four months of 2022 that figure was broken, with December 2022 being the worst month.

Read more: Scottish Water bosses announce five per cent hike in charges

Scottish Water announced it February that it would be raising its prices during a cost of living crisis with a 5% hike from April this year..

Bosses pointed to “significant future investment” being needed to protect services.

The rise, which came into effect from April, will see the amount households pay for water and waste services rise by an average of 37p per week.

The utility firm stressed about half of the 2.6 million households it supplies receive a discount on the charges – which are collected alongside council tax payments – or are exempt entirely.

Read more: Labour and Tories run from climate commitments as Europe burns

A Scottish Water spokesperson said: “Leakage levels are at an all-time low.

“They reduced last year (2022/23) to 454 million litres per day compared with 459 million litres per day in 2021/22.

“This was despite the freeze and thaw in December 2022 when there was a surge of burst pipes and leaks as sub-zero temperatures turned into a rapid thaw.

“We have reduced leakage year-on-year since 2006, when we had leakage of 1,100 million litres per day. Over the past 17 years we have reduced leakage by 59%."

He added: “In our network of 30,516 miles of water pipes throughout Scotland, we continue to target further reductions in leakage to prevent unnecessary waste of treated water, improve resilience of our water resources and help reduce the energy required to produce and distribute water to our customers.

“We work extremely hard to bring down leakage with measures including advanced technology to predict where and when leakage might occur.”