Feargal Sharkey calls out hypocrisy of golf clubs and private schools escaping England’s hosepipe ban

Environmentalist Feargal Sharkey has pointed to what many will see as an unfair contradiction in England’s growing water crisis; millions of households are being asked to restrict their water use, while private schools and golf clubs can continue irrigating their grounds.

Sharkey posted an image on X showing a golf course in north London being watered by sprinklers.

“So while 26 million people in England and Wales are living under a hosepipe ban last night this is happening on a golf club in north London. What am I missing?” he wrote.

It’s a reasonable question.

Following back-to-back heatwaves, almost half of England and the whole of Wales are now in drought. Nearly 26 million people are facing restrictions on hosepipe use, with South West Water the latest supplier to introduce a ban, joining eight other water companies across southern England and Wales.

Yet exemptions mean some sporting facilities, including golf courses and private-school playing fields, can continue to water their grounds.

That’s where questions about privilege become difficult to ignore.

In Barnes, south-west London, the playing fields of St Paul’s School, where annual fees can reach around £57,000, have remained notably green against the surrounding dry landscape.

In Kent, Royal St George’s Golf Club at Sandwich Bay, one of Britain’s most prestigious golf clubs, has similarly maintained its lush playing surfaces.

Membership at Royal St George’s is by recommendation, while visitors can play on selected days for around £400.

For someone who has been told they cannot use a hosepipe to water their garden or fill a paddling pool for their children, seeing an expensive golf course being watered is naturally going to raise questions about fairness.

There are legitimate reasons for some of these exemptions. Golf courses and other sporting facilities can have sophisticated irrigation, water-storage and rainwater-management systems. Maintaining their grounds may therefore have a different impact on the water supply than millions of individual households using mains water.

But that doesn’t remove the wider question of fairness.

If wealthy institutions can invest in infrastructure that allows them to maintain immaculate green playing surfaces during extreme drought, why has similar investment not been made in the country’s wider water infrastructure?

And why should an ordinary family face restrictions while an exclusive sporting club can continue to maintain grounds that are, ultimately, a luxury rather than an essential service?

That’s the contradiction Sharkey is pointing towards.

It’s not an argument that golf courses are responsible for England’s water shortages, or that every exemption is necessarily unjustified. It’s an argument about priorities and public trust.

Climate change is making extreme heat and prolonged drought more likely. Britain cannot control the weather, but it can decide how prepared it is for it.

The debate sparked by Sharkey’s post is therefore about more than golf. It’s about how Britain manages an increasingly scarce resource, who is allowed to use it during a crisis, and whether those decisions are seen as fair.

Because when the message is conserve water, but some of the greenest places are those that can afford the infrastructure to keep them that way, it is reasonable to ask: conserve it for whom?