No civilised country should have hosepipe bans

George II’s reputed saying that the English summer consists of three fine days and a thunderstorm needs updating. It now consists of three fine days, a hosepipe ban and then a thunderstorm.

Last week, customers of South East Water in Kent and Sussex were told that they will be forbidden to use hosepipes and sprinklers until further notice. This, after 4,000 households found themselves with no water at all.

Apparently, it is all our fault for being too thirsty. “We have been left with no choice,” says the company’s website. “The South East has experienced a prolonged period of dry weather, meaning we’re pumping much more drinking water to customer taps than normal. This, coupled with the high temperatures experienced in recent weeks, has seen demand for treated water reach record levels.”

In asserting that the South East has suffered a shortage of rain, the company is presumably counting on us not looking up rainfall records for its area. But if you do check the Met Office’s station data for Eastbourne, for example, you find that last summer’s drought was followed by a sopping November, December, January and March. All in all, the town recorded 914 mm of rain in the 12 months to the end of May – 15 per cent above the average of 792 mm for the years 1990-2020.  

So, not so much a lack of water, then – more a lack of will to collect it and distribute it to customers.

That is the problem with the whole water industry. As localised monopolies, water companies don’t have to win our business – they just have to do the bare minimum to avoid upsetting the water regulator Ofwat. The problem is compounded by the fact that still only half the homes in England have a water meter, meaning that, for the rest, the marginal cost of turning on the tap is zero, and water companies earn no extra revenue for water consumed in those properties other than their fixed annual charge.  

But rationing also meets the new spirit of the age – where we are encouraged to believe that it is somehow good and moral to limit our usage of energy and water, rather than seeing a plentiful supply of each as essential to a modern, civilised society.

Indeed, this mantra has become a handy excuse for companies and governments. Why invest in new reservoirs and other infrastructure when you can control demand by bleating about water shortages and climate change, imposing restrictions in the knowledge that your customers will just have to lump it? No significant new reservoirs have been built in England in the past 30 years.

Moreover, the pipe network is still in such a state that a fifth of the water collected and treated leaks before it reaches customers. A proposed national water grid which could move water from the damp west of the country to the drier and more populated east has failed to materialise.  

In a functioning market, businesses encourage customers to use their product. You don’t get supermarkets shutting up shop at 3pm because the shelves are empty and they couldn’t be bothered to source more food to sell us. They don’t ban us from buying their products and suggest that we might like to think about eating less. Why should water be any different?

Ross Clark is the author most recently of ‘Not Zero’