Northumbrian Water is encouraging its customers to use water wisely following a warm and extremely dry start to the year.

The Met Office announced this week that it has been the driest start to spring in 69 years across England and the driest March since 1961. April saw the UK receive just half of its normal rainfall, with even less seen here in the North East.

With warm weather forecast to continue at least over the next two weeks, and the Environment Agency confirming there is a medium risk of a drought this summer, the water company is reminding its customers to be more mindful of their water usage when it comes to things like paddling pools, hot tubs and watering their gardens, in a bid to help protect water resources and the environment.

A typical large paddling pool can use up to 3,200 litres of water, and a hot tub can use up to 1,500 litres - more than ten times most people’s average daily usage in one go on top of what they would normally use.

Kieran Ingram, Water Director at Northumbrian Water, said:

“The sunshine and prolonged hot dry weather means we have seen an increase in demand for water recently.

“Although we're used to managing demand, we still need customers to play their part by using water wisely, so that we can continue to manage supplies and keep the water flowing.

“We will continually monitor our stocks of water this over the dry period, but when large numbers of people start using things like hot tubs or paddling pools it can pull heavily on our resources and sometimes this means the water in our network is being used faster than we can turn it from raw water into drinking water.”

Northumbrian Water’s leakage is the lowest it has ever been but the company says they are not being complacent. Leakage teams will be working finding and fixing leaks in the water network to help preserve as much water as possible as demand increases.