The truth behind the waffle from Yorkshire Water on its hosepipe ban - David Behrens

It would be easy to write off a hosepipe ban as an inevitable effect of the recent dry spell, and that’s exactly what Yorkshire Water would like us to do. But it isn’t so and it’s important not to let the myths and exaggerations the company peddles as facts just wash over us.

Its long-winded self-justification for the ban was as disingenuous a piece of hogwash as I’ve read in a long time. Hogwashing, by the way, is still something you can legally do with a hosepipe.

You’d have thought Nicola Shaw, who got £1m last year as chief executive, would have sought to earn her keep by explaining it herself but she bottled it and delegated the job to Dave Kaye, her “director of water”. What the heck do the other directors direct, then? And if water is being directed, shouldn’t more of it end up in the right places?

Kaye said this: “Introducing these restrictions is not a decision we have taken lightly and we’ve been doing everything we can to avoid having to put them in place.” Oh, really? What specifically have you done?

He didn’t say. What he said was that the ban was intended to make sure there was enough water “for this year and next as well”.

Oh, there’s a two-year plan, is there? So how did Dave explain why there’s nothing in the bank from last year, one of the wettest of all time, in which acres of land were waterlogged and crops ruined? It took months to wring ourselves out and the undeniably dry spring this year should have done no more than balance the books.

That’s how it’s supposed to work: flood and drought evening each other out, just as commercialism and regulation were supposed to.

But that is an inconvenient truth Dave Kaye forgot to mention. Another is that Yorkshire Water paid £37.5m to investors while farmers were struggling to stay above water.

The most telling part of his homily, however, was buried at the end. He must have hoped no-one would read that far. This was it: “Having restrictions in place also allows us to apply for drought permits from the Environment Agency, which means we can abstract more water from our rivers and reduce compensation flows out of our reservoirs.”

There we have it: it’s an administrative device to manipulate the regulatory system, a tick in the box that gives the company carte blanche to ‘abstract’, in other words take, water from rivers and in the process risk causing further pollution and starving the fish.

So much for Dave Kaye’s waffle about “making sure we’re able to protect our local environment”. You got the impression he’d have said anything to make it look as if he and his company gave a toss.

He had barely finished spewing forth when scientists revealed the extent to which mismanagement by companies like his is slowly poisoning us all. A witches’ brew of sewage overflows and coastal winds is carrying billions of tiny plastic fragments from the water into the air, says Plymouth University, and the closer you are to the coast, the worse it is. I’m a few hundred yards away so you may not hear from me again.

This is one of the consequences of the failed experiment on privatised water that we are only just beginning to comprehend. They make a travesty of Yorkshire Water even trying to suggest that taking its medicine is for our own good.

Its hosepipe ban will remain until winter at least and Nicola Shaw and Dave Kaye can only hope the company will last that long.

Meanwhile, you may like to know that you can fill buckets and watering cans to your heart’s content. You should also know that if you see someone with a hosepipe, there is nothing you can do about it. If you call 999 all the police will do is tell you off for wasting their time. So the ban is essentially unenforceable.

There will nevertheless be many of us looking for something else to do with our hosepipes, so I suggest we take turns at sticking them down Dave Kaye’s trousers. It’s lucky for him that we can’t turn them on.