UK Hosepipe Ban Risk: Which Areas Have Banned Most

Back-to-back drought years

Two hosepipe bans in three years. That is the recent record for parts of South East England, and it has no close modern precedent.

The gap between the 1995 bans and 2012 was seventeen years. Between 2012 and 2022, ten years. Between 2022 and 2025, no gap at all.

The acceleration is real - but it is not evenly distributed. Some water company areas have faced restrictions three times since 2012. Others, including some of England's driest regions, have seen none.

The ban record since 2012

LocalRisk draws on primary source records for every Temporary Use Ban (TUB) declared under Section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991 since 2012. The table below shows total ban events by company across the three drought years: 2012, 2022, and 2025.

| Water company | Area served | Bans since 2012 | |---|---|---| | South East Water | Kent and Sussex | 3 | | Southern Water | Hampshire and Isle of Wight | 3 | | Thames Water | London and surrounding counties | 3 | | Yorkshire Water | Yorkshire and parts of Lincolnshire and Derbyshire | 2 | | South West Water | Cornwall and Devon | 1 | | Affinity Water | Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, north London and parts of Surrey | 1 | | Anglian Water | East of England | 1 | | SES Water | Surrey and parts of Kent | 1 | | Welsh Water (Dŵr Cymru) | Pembrokeshire and parts of Carmarthenshire (partial area) | 1 | | Severn Trent Water | Midlands and Welsh Borders | 0 | | United Utilities | North West England | 0 | | Wessex Water | Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset | 0 | | Bristol Water | Bristol and Somerset | 0 | | Portsmouth Water | Hampshire coast | 0 | | Northumbrian Water | North East England | 0 | | South Staffordshire Water | Staffordshire | 0 | | Scottish Water | Scotland | 0 | | NI Water | Northern Ireland | 0 |

_Source: Water company official announcements and Ofwat records, compiled by LocalRisk. Covers Temporary Use Bans (hosepipe bans) from January 2012 to April 2026._

South East Water, Southern Water, and Thames Water have each declared a TUB in every ban year since 2012. No other company has matched that record.

Why the South East keeps appearing

The pattern is geological as much as meteorological.

Most of South East England's water supply comes from chalk aquifers - underground rock formations that hold water and release it slowly into rivers and boreholes. Around 75% of South East Water's supply comes from groundwater, compared to roughly 30% across the UK as a whole.

Chalk aquifers refill slowly. When a drought breaks with autumn and winter rainfall, surface reservoirs can recover within weeks. Chalk aquifers may take months or years to return to normal levels. This is why South East Water customers sit in a structurally different risk position to customers served by companies with large surface storage - even in the same dry summer.

The 2025 figures illustrate the gap. South East Water's ban ran from 18 July 2025 to 5 February 2026 - nearly seven months, the longest single restriction of that summer. Ardingly reservoir in West Sussex had fallen to around 25% capacity by October 2025. Above-average winter rainfall allowed it to return to near full capacity by the time the ban was lifted in February 2026.

The Anglian Water anomaly

The most counterintuitive entry in the table is Anglian Water.

Anglian serves England's driest region. East Anglia typically receives around 550 to 600mm of annual rainfall - well below the English average of roughly 850mm. The 2022 drought brought the driest July in England since 1935 and temperatures above 40°C in parts of the region. Anglian Water did not impose a ban.

It had done so in 2012 and was among the first to lift restrictions, on 7 June that year. But in both 2022 and 2025, when neighbouring areas faced months of restrictions, Anglian's customers were unaffected.

The explanation is infrastructure. Anglian has invested heavily in reservoir capacity - Rutland Water is one of England's largest reservoirs - alongside a strategic transfer network that can move water between supply areas under stress. That combination of storage and inter-regional connectivity means a dry summer in one part of the region can be offset elsewhere. Receiving less rainfall does not automatically translate to higher hosepipe ban risk.

South West Water's 13-month ban

South West Water appears once in the data - but its single TUB lasted over a year.

The ban declared on 23 August 2022 was not lifted until 25 September 2023. It began in Cornwall and was extended to most of Devon in April 2023, when it became clear that Roadford Reservoir in north Devon had not recovered enough over winter to meet projected summer demand.

The South West depends on a small number of large reservoirs - Colliford in Cornwall, Roadford and Wimbleball in Devon and Somerset - with limited transfer capacity between them. When multiple reservoirs remained low after winter, there was no way to compensate. A restriction that began as a summer measure ran through two calendar years. It is the longest enforced hosepipe ban in modern UK records.

Yorkshire: two consecutive bans

Yorkshire Water imposed bans in both 2022 and 2025, one of only two companies to appear in consecutive drought years.

The 2022 ban ran from 26 August to 6 December across Yorkshire and parts of Lincolnshire and Derbyshire. The 2025 ban covered the same area from 11 July to 10 December - five months in a single summer.

Yorkshire Water's supply relies partly on upland Pennine reservoirs. In a dry summer, high evaporation rates and reduced catchment runoff drain them faster than lowland systems. Without large aquifer reserves or long-distance transfer capacity to draw on, the system has limited buffer against a sustained dry spell.

Wales

Welsh Water imposed one TUB, but it applied to a small part of its service area. The restriction, which ran from 19 August to 25 October 2022, covered Pembrokeshire and parts of Carmarthenshire only - a localised supply issue in the far south-west, not a Wales-wide response. Most Welsh postcodes have no ban history.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland has not had a hosepipe ban since 1995. The legal framework differs from England and Wales: Scottish Water must apply to Scottish Ministers for a water shortage order rather than declaring a TUB directly. The process has a higher threshold and takes longer, meaning informal conservation appeals are typically the first response in dry periods. Scotland also receives substantially more rainfall than England and Wales.

Northern Ireland Water has no confirmed ban in the modern era. For Scottish and Northern Irish postcodes, the absence of ban records is accurate - not a data gap.

What this means for property buyers and renters

A hosepipe ban restricts specific outdoor water uses - garden watering by hose, car washing, filling paddling pools and ornamental ponds. It does not affect indoor use and does not typically feature in standard mortgage valuations or property searches.

The practical question for buyers and renters is about likely frequency. An area served by a company with three bans since 2012 - in a chalk aquifer zone where recovery takes months - should be treated as one where summer restrictions are a recurring feature of the climate, not an exceptional event. Properties with large gardens, outdoor pools, or significant outdoor water demand are more affected by this than those without.

The 2022 and 2025 pattern suggests the South East in particular may face multi-month restrictions in most dry summers from here, rather than once a decade.

Check your postcode

Every LocalRisk postcode result shows the water company serving your address, its ban history since 2012, and any active restriction. You can check any UK postcode at localrisk.co.uk.

_Data sources: Water company official Temporary Use Ban announcements; Ofwat records; Ofwat water company boundary data (Open Government Licence v3.0). Records cover bans legally enforced under Section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991, January 2012 to April 2026._

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