Drinking fountains must be brought back to aid Britain's litter problem, campaigners have urged.

Keep Britain Tidy found that only around seven per cent of the population ever use communal water fountains while four times as many people spend money on expensive and environmentally unfriendly plastic bottles of water.

Britons use 7.7bn single-use plastic water bottles a year and fewer than half are recycled, meaning that 16 million bottles are binned every day in Britain.

But the new report by the charity found that many people feel obliged to buy water when out and about because of a dearth of public water fountains and taps at, train and bus stations, airports and motorways service stations.

Water fountains used to be common, but in recent years fears about hygiene have seen them vanish from public streets, parks and buildings.