Public has little patience with hosepipe bans after Covid rule-breaking hypocrisies: Jayne Dowle

Neither are particularly keen gardeners, nor spend their weekends washing fleets of cars. But both said the same thing. Since they found out what the government really got up during those long months of Covid lockdowns, they’ve lost faith in any kind of official jurisdiction.

They won’t breathe a word, they whispered, should I look upon my own lawn, borders and pots in despair as the hosepipe ban drags on to winter and decide to risk the possibility of a £1,000 fine.

I was quite shocked to be honest. But not surprised. These are quiet, bill-paying, law-abiding individuals over the age of 60, not renegades firing their own water cannons.

You certainly wouldn’t find them staging a protest on the town hall steps. But they are heartily sick of being told what to do by all forms of authority, especially ones that don’t put their own houses in order first. Not to mention being rinsed by profiteering utilities companies putting up bills. As one neighbour pointed out, “Yorkshire Water must be losing thousands of gallons of water a day in leaks. Why should we suffer?”

Whilst reservoirs up on the moors run dry, there has indeed been a constant stream running down the pavement not far from where we live for the last three weeks.

Yet, according to Yorkshire Water, leakage is the lowest it has ever been and discharges to watercourses reduced by 12 per cent in 2024, “with further reductions expected this year.

“We embarked on our largest ever investment in April 2025, delivering £8.3 billion of improvements to benefit customers and the environment,” a spokesperson told the media last week.

My neighbours are not selfish, uncaring people. They understand that water is precious and the weather increasingly extreme and unpredictable. But in their own determined way, they are only saying what many of us think and some are already articulating.

Luke Charters, Labour MP for York Outer, has said the hosepipe ban’s announcement followed Yorkshire Water’s “failure to invest” in its infrastructure which is “leakier than a colander”.

And one of Britain’s largest unions slams what it calls an “outrageous” ban. Deanne Ferguson, the GMB union’s organiser for Yorkshire, said people in our region are “being punished while profits flow and pollution pours out”.

The water restrictions came after Yorkshire Water “lost 95 billion litres of water through leaks last year”, Ferguson added: “That’s 260 million litres wasted every single day. Meanwhile, they've dumped hundreds of thousands of hours’ worth of sewage into our rivers and coastlines.”

What a difference from that long, hot summer of 1976. When standpipes came out onto the streets and the Army was deployed in deliver water in their Green Goddess fire engines, I remember the adults unquestionably accepting the rules.

The government had announced an emergency powers bill at the beginning of July and the resultant Drought Act came into force on August 6, by which time the heatwave had burnt itself out. Besides banning hosepipes, the Act could allow for domestic and industrial supplies to be reduced or turned off.

The hottest temperature recorded back then, 35.6C, seems positively moderate, considering the UK has now experienced highs of 40C, first recorded at Heathrow Airport during the 2022 heatwave.

Three years later, Yorkshire officially went into drought on June 12; natural weather patterns play their part in drought, but climate change and our growing use of water are raising the risks of water shortages, the Environment Agency says.

As a result of falling water supplies, Yorkshire Water’s became the first regional hosepipe ban this year – others are set to follow - and comes after months of extremely hot and dry weather across England.

Congratulating us on dropping our water usage by about 26m gallons (100m litres) in just two days, Dave Kaye, director of water at Yorkshire Water, perhaps should have thought twice. “We're all in this together - the vast majority of our colleagues are customers too,” he said earlier this week. “And we're all doing our bit at home and in the workplace to save water.”

“All in this together?” “Doing our bit”? We’ve heard all this before of course, and as one of my neighbours said, “And where did it get us? That Matt Hancock telling us not to kill granny, then ending up snogging that woman in a lift”.

Rain is forecast, but it looks like we’re in for a long, broiling summer of discontent.