UK Spring Water Regulations
<p>I just saw a post talking about how various brands of spring water in the UK are not meeting regulations because they are bottled at a different location to the spring.</p>
<p>Looking online, most sites (including <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/spring-water-how-to-produce-and-label" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.gov.uk/guidance/spring-water-how-to-produce-and-label</a>) specify that &quot;bottling must take place at the spring or borehole&quot;, with some linking to the legislation for England:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2007/2785/contents" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The Natural Mineral Water, Spring Water and Bottled Drinking Water (England) Regulations 2007</a></p>
<p>However, while I know my legal speak isn't very good, I just can't find where in that document it explicitly says that spring water must be bottled at source?</p>
<p>Schedule 10 (the most obvious place) just seems to say it must be extracted from spring, not altered, and meet Schedule 2&amp;4. Those two schedules seems to mainly just cover the requirements for the water to be legally considered mineral/spring, but don't cover bottling.</p>
<p>Is someone able to point out where in the regulations it states that the water must be bottled at source?</p>

<p><a href="/questions/tagged/england" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;england&#39;" aria-label="show questions tagged &#39;england&#39;" rel="tag" aria-labelledby="england-container">england</a></p>
<p>Admittedly it's not very clear, but paragraph 5 of <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2007/2785/schedule/4?timeline=false" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Schedule 4</a> restricts the use of anything else apart from the resulting consumers' bottles, ergo bottling has to take place at the point of extraction (Subject to sub-para 3):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>5.—(1) Subject to sub-paragraphs (2) and (3), <strong>water must not be transported in containers other than those authorised for distribution to the ultimate consumer</strong>.</p>
<p>(2) [<em>omitted</em>]</p>
<p>(3) Water distributed to the ultimate consumer in a bottle marked or labelled with the description “spring water” may be transported from the spring to the bottling plant in a container which is not for distribution to the ultimate consumer if, on or before 13th December 1996, water from that spring was so transported.</p>
</blockquote>

united-kingdom regulations legislature water