Yorkshire Water hosepipe ban expectations amidst heatwave revealed by chief executive

It comes after South East Water imposed a ban for its customers in Kent this week and after Yorkshire had one in place for much of 2025.

She said: “We’ve been investing in our systems and made sure all the work done was ready for the summer so the water is flowing through the system really well. Secondly we had a lot of rain over the winter.

“If you remember how dry it was last summer, suddenly in about September the heavens opened and they didn’t really stop.

“That has meant reservoirs and the rivers have all recharged. So we are in a good position this year. But we would still urge you to be cautious with how much water you use. We can all help each other in the community by not using too much if we don’t need to.”

She added that the company has been dealing with a “very busy week” as demand has increased during the hot spell.

“Normally our treatment works would be expecting to put out about 1,400 million litres of water a day. When it is really hot you might expect it to go up by about 80 million litres. We’re at that point, going up and over 100 million litres extra.”

Both Anglian Water and Severn Trent have also said they have no current plans for hosepipe bans.

Yorkshire Water said earlier this week its reservoir levels stand at 84.5 per cent, compared to 61.5 per cent this time 12 months ago. Last year, a hosepipe ban began on July 11, 2025 and ended on December 10.

Ms Shaw said the picture has changed largely because of the high levels of rainfall since over the winter months.

“It was quite a phenomenal weather sequence. We had almost no rain from February to September 2025, and then we had an enormous amount of rain between September and December.

“We took the hosepipe ban off in December, having thought we would have had to it on until sometime between January and March.

“It illustrated the extent of the variability of the rain. It stayed raining at a pretty good rate through the first four months of the year and even into May. So we were in a good position when we came into this heatwave. I have zero expectation we will have a hosepipe ban this year which is a good place to be in.”

She added that current infrastructure work means hosepipe bans in future years will also become less likely.

“We’re building new boreholes to put more water into the supply and some more service reservoirs to give us that protection.

“I’m very hopeful that the risk of more hosepipe bans is going down. But clearly the population is rising, people’s demand for water is rising and we’re really urging people to think really hard about their consumption of water.”