Who should announce hosepipe bans?

28 August 2025

This summer has seen exceptionally low rainfall and multiple heatwaves that have taken their toll on farm crop yields, river temperatures and fish mortality. Yet water companies have been strangely reluctant to announce hosepipe bans. What gives?

A tale of the spring and summer of 2025 in quotes:

“It is crucial that we deliver large-scale and co-ordinated action and unlock more opportunities to address pressures on the water environment from unsustainable abstraction. Continued and sustained effort from government, from regulators and action from regional groups, water companies, abstractor groups and water users across all sectors is critical” – Alan Lovell, chair of the Environment Agency, in the foreword to the latest National Framework for Water Resources, published in June.

“It’s hard to say this summer has been typical so far when we look at the statistics. June was the warmest on record for England, with our records going back to 1884. That warmth has continued into July, with three heatwaves so far this summer” – Met Office scientist Emily Carlisle quoted in a Met Office blog, posted in July.

“As water for irrigation becomes less available after farmers have had to use water earlier than ever before, it is likely that high value crops such as vegetables and potatoes will be hit too unless we see significant rainfall in the coming weeks. The effects of extreme weather on our food and farming system are now the new normal” – Tom Lancaster, a land, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, commenting in July on more English regions moving into drought status.

“Severn Trent hasn’t had a hosepipe ban for more than 30 years because we know just how important it is for our customers” – a July statement from Severn Trent responding to the declaration of drought in the Midlands.

Drought 2025

At the time of writing, in mid-July, we’re well into a drought affecting much of the country. This summer has seen exceptional warmth, sunshine, low rainfall and multiple heatwaves. They’ve taken their toll on farm crop yields, on river temperatures and fish mortality. Ministers are desperate to fast track new reservoirs as a looming long-term water supply crisis is forecast by the Environment Agency.

And yet water companies seem strangely reluctant to announce temporary use bans (TUBs), popularly known as hosepipe bans.

The newly-launched National Framework for Water Resources – the strategic guide for how long-term planning for water resources should be undertaken across various water-using sectors – is placing growing emphasis on the need for deeper awareness around water resources in sectors beyond public water supply.

Conditions and impacts this summer have only served to underline that message, and we know that in the future there will be growing demand for water for irrigation in the agriculture sector, for data centre cooling and in the energy sector. Then there is ‘environmental destination’, the need to ensure enough water is left in rivers for a healthy water environment.

Why then, in the name of all that is parched and eutrophic, is it left to water companies, who have a legal duty only to supply water for domestic purposes, to declare TUBs themselves?

Is it hard to get into the TUB?

Following the summer 2022 drought, farming, wildlife and water managers called for water companies to go early in announcing restrictions. Subsequently, water company employees noted that their customer bases had been of similar mind. Customers saw the impacts and said, “Why didn’t you tell us to reduce our water use earlier?”

Since early this summer, parts of the country have been officially in drought, starting with the northwest and northeast. Drought declarations are made by the Environment Agency, and effectively give water companies the mandate to apply TUBs. Yet again though, water companies have seemed reluctant to go as far as announcing bans for fear of negative public reaction which feeds through into their performance ratings.

At the time of writing, only seven million people are subject to a ban, although in areas where drought was likely to be, or had been declared, companies have been actively encouraging their customers to use water carefully for a while now.

But is this all a bit too convoluted from both government and the companies? As the National Drought Group first met this year in late spring, CIWEM wrote to water minister Emma Hardy MP, encouraging the government to provide support to companies in the public narrative around careful water use during times of drought. A consistent voice across government, regulators and water companies on water efficiency would help to underline the importance, we said.

Of course, companies need to make big inroads into their leakage levels. But the common media and public question around why customers should reduce their use when companies leak so much away through their pipes doesn’t help keep more water in rivers, reservoirs and aquifers right when it’s most needed for wildlife as well as wider water-using sectors.

Hosepipe bans aren’t a silver bullet, but they certainly seem to be a threshold over which people think, “Actually, this is getting serious”. And they are not an admission of failure but rather a widely recognised, time-bound management response to drought conditions.

Who should make the call?

If there are perverse regulatory drivers disincentivising water companies from pushing the big red TUB button, and shaky levels of public trust and respect for them amplify this further, surely it’s time for a rethink?

Given that a hosepipe subject to a TUB will be connected to a public water supply tap, supplied by a water company, there is logic in it being that company who should determine when it’s appropriate to install a ban. But that logic focuses all the importance upon public water supply, when we all know that agricultural and environmental droughts are the first to commence and that the last people to seriously run short of water will be the public.

If, by default, it was the Environment Agency and their devolved counterparts who instead defined (as part of a drought declaration) when TUBs should commence, surely that simplifies protection of the water environment?

What that means, of course, is that ministers would then own the decision, indirectly. Perhaps they don’t want to do that. But perhaps they should.

--

Read CIWEM’s policy position statement on drought management in the UK here.

For more CIWEM news updates, sign up to The Environment newsletter, our free monthly news round up. This article also featured in The Environment magazine, available to CIWEM members via MyCIWEM.

Alastair Chisholm is director of policy at CIWEM