Yorkshire Water has announced this morning that it will introduce a hosepipe ban from 26th August.
The water company’s decision to introduce a hosepipe ban is based on the risk that water stocks continue to fall in the coming weeks and the need to be cautious about clean water supplies and long term river health.
Having a hosepipe ban in place will also allow Yorkshire Water to apply for drought permits from the Environment Agency. This means it can abstract more water from rivers and reduce flows out of reservoirs so it can continue to provide water to customers.
The ban will come into effect on 26th August - Yorkshire Water said it will keep everyone updated on when it will end.
Yorkshire Water’s director of water, Neil Dewis, said:
“Parts of Yorkshire have seen the lowest rainfall since our records began more than 130 years ago. The hot, dry, weather means that Yorkshire’s rivers are running low and our reservoirs are around 20% lower than we would expect for this time of year.
“We’ve been doing everything we can to avoid putting in restrictions but unfortunately, they’re now necessary as part of our drought planning.
“We’re grateful to our customers, who have been saving water where they can this summer. It is really important that we all continue to do so, to help protect our water resources and the.
“We’ve been working hard in the background to balance our water stocks through our region-wide grid system (an investment made by Yorkshire Water after the last hosepipe ban in 1995/6) and reduce water lost from leaky pipes (we have reduced this by 50% since 1995/6) - this year we have extra people in our field teams and have adopted a seven-day working pattern so that we can find and fix leaks quicker.
“We’ve been monitoring reservoir levels, weather forecasts and other environmental indicators closely to determine whether we might need to put further measures in place.
“As we’ve now reached that trigger point, we need to make sure that we have enough supply for the essential needs of people across the region this year and next, as well as making sure we’re able to protect our local environment by limiting the amount of water we have to draw from the rivers.”
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