Wessex Water has announced a hosepipe ban after months of unprecedented dry weather, heatwaves and a continued lack of rain forecast, which has led to sustained high demand for water.
We have taken this decision after more than 40 days of demand for water remaining at record-breaking levels and the region formally declared as being in drought. We need to protect our water resources for both our customers and the environment.
It is the first time we have introduced a ban in half a century, since the famous drought of 1976.
From Tuesday 18 August at 00:01hrs our 1.4 million customers – in areas including Bath and parts of Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire – must not use a hosepipe for activities such as watering gardens, washing cars, patios, paths and driveways, cleaning windows or filling swimming and paddling pools.
This isn’t a decision we’ve taken lightly and we’re sorry for the inconvenience it will cause to residents in your area.
We have worked hard to avoid these restrictions, and the decision comes after a 60% reduction in leakage in the past 30 years and a five-year £230 million investment in our water supply grid , which came into use in 2018.
Repair teams have been fixing more leaks than ever this summer across the supply area, increasing repairs by more than a third in the last month alone.
But the prolonged and extreme dry weather has meant demand across our region has consistently remained at more than 400 million litres per day, 30 per cent above average for this time of year and the equivalent of almost half a million hosepipes running for a full hour every day.
While we’re not running out of water for essential use, our challenge has been moving water through the network quickly enough to meet these record levels of demand. This also has an impact on our underground storage reservoirs, which normally replenish with treated water quickly.
We know so many of our customers and stakeholders have already been taking steps to save water and spread the word in their communities – we’re incredibly grateful for the support so far this summer. It makes such a difference.
We’re writing to our customers to update them on the restrictions and contacting larger business customers who are high water users to encourage them to avoid non-essential use.
And we continue to encourage households to make small and simple changes during the ongoing dry weather, both for each other and for the environment.
For information about the hosepipe ban, please visit our website.