EIR2026/00809: Index to Statutory Borehole Notifications (BGS Ref - IDA 311107)
Case reference EIR2026/00809
Received 2 September 2026
Published 9 November 2026
Request
Request Received: 2 September 2026
Under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (SI 2004/3391), regulation 5(2), I request an extract from the Index to statutory borehole notifications, that is the index of notifications made under section 198 of the Water Resources Act 1991 and the Mining Industry Act 1926. I understand the statutory response period is 20 working days, extendable to 40 working days for a complex request.
The request is a narrow one, and it turns on a single question: does the notification index carry a purpose field that would allow ground source heating and cooling boreholes to be counted?
(1) Please tell me which fields the notification index holds for each entry, and in particular whether the purpose or intended use of the borehole is recorded as a structured field or a coded value, and if so, what values that field can take.
(2) If a purpose field exists, please supply the count of boreholes notified per year with the purpose recorded as ground source heating, ground source cooling, geothermal, heat pump, or any equivalent value, for each year from 2015 to 2025 inclusive.
(3) For the same entries, in electronic format (CSV or XLSX), and with no owner names and no street addresses:
(a) notification index number, and the municipality, local authority area or postcode district;
(b) the purpose or use value as recorded;
(c) the notification date, and the intended or actual start of drilling date where held;
(d) the notified or recorded depth, and the number of boreholes covered by the notification;
(e) the notifying party or drilling contractor where held;
(f) whether a completion record or log was subsequently deposited against the notification.
(4) Please also give the number of notifications recorded per year from 2015 to 2025 in total, so that the geothermal count can be read against the whole, and any figure you hold on the rate at which notifications are matched to a deposited borehole record.
(5) If the index carries no purpose field, please say so expressly. That answer is complete and useful in itself: it establishes that the statutory notification stream cannot be used to count ground source heat pump boreholes, and I will not press further. In that case I would be grateful if you would tell me whether any other BGS holding, for example the National Well Record Archive or the onshore borehole records in GeoIndex, carries a usable purpose classification.
Include, if held, any field indicating whether the borehole replaced, re-drilled or reused an existing borehole at the same address, and any abandonment or decommissioning record for a previous borehole at that address.
Response
Response Sent: 30 September 2026
Full details of this response are available in the attached document.
Documents
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