An estate owned by one of Britain’s richest women has been fined nearly £28,000 after it used the equivalent of three Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water during a drought.

The Ilchester Estate in Dorset is owned by Charlotte Townshend, who was listed at 287 in the 2024 Sunday Times Rich List thanks to inherited wealth, with her fortune now estimated at a staggering £489 million.

The estate, which spans over 15,000 acres of land in the West Country, “deliberately flouted” the conditions of its licence to abstract water from a spring on the headwaters for the chalk stream Dorset Frome at Evershot, the Environment Agency (EA) said.

It exceeded the limit for water abstraction by nearly 7,500 cubic metres between December 2022 and July 2023, according to an investigation by the EA.

The estate has a licence costing £120 a year to take water to supply its houses, offices, gardens and farms from the Dorset Frome, setting its own charges for supplying the water to businesses and residents on the estate.

It has now paid a penalty of £19,777.69 plus costs of £8,298.60 to the regulator for exceeding the conditions after previously being warned to stop over-abstracting water.

The estate was advised in 2018 how it could apply for an increase in its permitted abstraction levels, but said steps would be taken to reduce the amount of water being used.

But it continued to take water above the permitted level each year through to 2023, the EA said.