Spectre of summer hosepipe bans piles pressure on struggling water companies
Matt Oliver
8 min read
Low water levels at Baitings Reservoir - Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
As they travel through Devon and Cornwall this summer, holidaymakers will be told via bus stops, digital billboards, and flyers at service stations to save water during their visit.
The warning is not news to the roughly 1.4 million people living in the regions, some of whom have now been living under a continuous hose pipe ban for more than nine months.
It is a visible reminder that much of Britain has still not fully recovered from last year’s unexpected heatwave, when the country sweltered under record temperatures.
With rainfall worryingly low too, eight areas were declared to be experiencing droughts – prompting five water companies to announce hosepipe bans covering millions of households.
Now, with a dry spell from May continuing into June – and temperatures of up to 30 degrees celsius expected this weekend – experts are wondering whether summer 2023 could bring further nasty surprises.
According to the Met Office, the country is set for above-average temperatures in the coming months and near-average levels of rainfall. But if conditions end up being much hotter, it will spell serious trouble.
“We just have to wait and see,” says Lucy Barker, a drought expert at the Wallingford-based UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
“From mid-May, river flows have been receding over time because we basically haven’t seen any rainfall. If that continues then yes, I think we’re likely to see some impacts.”
About one third of the water that comes out of British taps comes from underground sources, known as aquifers. Almost all of the rest is drawn from surface sources such as reservoirs, lakes, and rivers.
Since last summer, water companies have been counting on winter rainfall to replenish supplies, with mixed to positive results, says Barker.
There was a spell from mid-January and through February that was exceptionally dry, but then March was exceptionally wet, she says. “So we’ve had relatively good recharge, in the south and east.”
But rainfall was average in April, according to the Met Office, and then reached only 55pc of average levels in May, with river flows receding as the month went on according to the Environment Agency.
With two regions still officially classed as being in drought – Devon and Cornwall, and parts of East Anglia – it means the seasonal drop in reservoirs, groundwater levels and river flows has now begun.
The Government is monitoring the situation with water companies through the National Drought Group, but the Environment Agency has warned shocks like last summer’s heatwave “can change everything in an instant”.
Droughts – prolonged periods of dry weather – make everything harder for water companies. A lack of rainfall means rivers don’t fill up. Evaporation leeches stored water from reservoirs. Dry ground shifts, damaging pipes. And – understandably – people use more water to stay cool.
In this aerial view the bed of the Woodhead reservoir can be seen as Summer water levels become reduced on July 21, 2022 in Glossop, England - Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
These vulnerabilities were left brutally exposed last year.
In the South West, the flagship Colliford reservoir dipped below 20pc capacity at its lowest ebb.
David Harris, drought director at Pennon Group, South West Water’s parent company, says “patchy” rain over the winter in Cornwall meant the company in March was “looking at going into summer 2023 with our strategic storage at record low levels”.
In response, South West extended a hosepipe ban up to December 1 to help bolster supplies, while the company has been pumping extra water from former quarry sites it has acquired as well.
As a result, Colliford is now about 70pc full, marginally higher than this time last year, but still well below the 90pc seen in previous dry years.
Harris urges customers to be “reasonable” when using water but adds: “If we do strike another very hot summer, we are confident of getting through without having to impose any tougher restrictions on customers or businesses.”
In the South East and London, Thames Water also claims it should not have to impose a hosepipe ban.
The company’s reservoirs in London and Farmoor, Oxfordshire, are 97pc and 99pc full, respectively, which it says is above average for this time of year.
“We are in a better position than last year,” says Nevil Muncaster, the company’s strategic resources and London operations director.
“I can’t say absolutely. But all our projections at the moment show we won’t be needing temporary use bans,” he adds.
Last year, the company coped with droughts by imposing hosepipe bans and dispatching mobile tankers to water-intensive businesses such as golf courses and garden centres, providing them with treated wastewater instead of normal drinking water.
The company also stood up 200 teams to fix leaks as quickly as possible, with staff fixing one every seven minutes at their peak.
But Thames was caught on the back foot by a badly-timed decision to take a £250m desalination plant in London offline for maintenance. It normally could have provided water for 400,000 homes in the capital.
Muncaster says the plant is expected to be back in operation by July, after some initial delays.
He doesn’t accept that water companies were partly responsible for last year’s crisis, despite the industry’s risible record on leaks.
More than 20pc of supplies are lost to them, according to regulator Ofwat, or about 2.3 billion litres per day in the year to March 2021.
“Last year was an extreme summer,” says Muncaster. “And we’re seeing extreme events across Europe at the moment.”
A landscape of dry, brown and parched grass in Brockwell Park - Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images
He says climate change and population growth pose much bigger challenges to water supplies, meaning we can no longer afford to ignore the issue of water scarcity.
According to Defra, water companies currently supply around 14 billion litres of water a day – equivalent to about 5,600 Olympic swimming pools.
But about one billion litres of this will be wiped out by climate change by 2045, while demand is expected to rise by another four billion litres per day by 2050.
In response, the industry is working with Ofwat to fast-track £14bn worth of supply-boosting schemes. Next to a £10bn investment plan to fix sewage problems, it means household bills are almost certain to go up.
Three new reservoirs are planned, in Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire, while other solutions include water recycling schemes, pipe networks that can move water from wetter areas to dryer ones and more desalination plants.
The Government also wants to reduce customer demand significantly. At the moment, households consume an average of 144 litres of water per person each day but ministers want to get this down to 122 litres.
One potential model to follow can be found in the East of England, the country’s driest region.
A big consequence of this is that when Anglian asks people to cut back, they noticeably do, says Geoff Darch, the company’s head of supply demand strategy.
Another has been the discovery of a huge number of hidden household leaks, often through toilet cisterns that keep going even when the bowl is refilled. Around 8pc of households have leaks like this.
“The biggest saving from going to a smart meter is actually in spotting these continuous leaks”, says Whitehouse. “They’re very hard to spot – but with a smart meter we can notify customers and we find they do get them fixed in a very timely fashion.”
Anglian’s record is by no means spotless – in April the company was fined £2.7m after admitting to discharging untreated sewage into the North Sea – but the company’s success with demand reduction is what helped it to avoid hosepipe bans or syphoning water from rivers last summer, Darch says.
Another option being looked at by some companies is desalination plants, like the two that South West Water wants to build on Cornwall’s south coast.
However, they have high energy requirements and their output of salt-heavy waste can be environmentally harmful if not released in the right place.
Whatever the answer, Jim Hunt, a local businessman and self-described “climate nut” in Cornwall, who has spent years monitoring the Colliford reservoir, believes the debate over Britain’s future water supplies requires even more attention than the admittedly much smellier problem with sewage.
“The sewage issues have become a political hot potato, but droughts, not so much”, he says.
“If a desalination doesn’t materialise and this summer’s weather is anything like last year, there’ll be standpipes and whatever and people will be going thirsty.
“Now, silver surfers like me and children bathing on Cornish beaches is one thing, but not having fresh water to drink is, I would humbly suggest, actually a much bigger issue.”
