Severn Trent urges customers to restrict hosepipe use

Severn Trent supplied customers with an extra 350 million litres of water as temperatures soared over the weekend.

The water company, which has urged people to restrict their use of hosepipes and sprinklers during the night, said some of its customers had been affected by low pressure due to the increase in demand.

It estimated that leaving sprinklers or hosepipes running can use up to 1,000 litres of water an hour, which is typically more water than a family of four would use in a normal day.

However, a spokesperson said that Severn Trent’s water levels were “looking very healthy” and confirmed it had no plans to implement a hosepipe ban.

Marcus O’Kane, water resources manager for Severn Trent, said: “We have a huge network of pipes and storage reservoirs across our region that allows us to move water around to where it’s needed.

“These reservoirs need to refill during the night – that’s the way they’re designed so our customers have water available when they get up in the morning.

“Because some customers are leaving hosepipes or sprinklers running overnight, we are not seeing these reservoirs refill as much as we’d like, which means there’s less water available in the morning. Therefore some of our customers are seeing lower pressure than normal and there is more risk if we have a problem somewhere on our network.”