Yorkshire sees demand fall in response to drought messaging

Water demand was 100 million litres a day lower in Yorkshire last week compared to last month’s heatwave, which the company attributed to customer response to efficiency messaging.

Last week Yorkshire Water announced a hosepipe ban would come into effect from 26 August days before a drought was declared across the county following months of below average rainfall.

Yorkshire thanked its customers for responding to messaging to use less water as it saw demand, on average, fall compared to the heatwave in July. Last weekend when temperatures hit 30 degrees, consumption was around 1.4 billion litres daily, which was 100 million litres lower than the heatwave the previous month.

As well as demand management signaling results, the company has increased its leakage activity by drawing resources from across the business to focus on leakage and bring the team to more than 500 people finding and repairing leaking pipes.

Martyn Hattersley, head of demand management at Yorkshire, said the lowest rainfall for more than 130 years had left reservoirs below 50% full.

“Our customers understand the challenge we’re currently facing and whilst we’re increasing efforts to save as much water as possible from leaky pipes, our customers are doing their bit to save water at home too,” he said.

He added that after the long, dry conditions, keeping as much water in reservoirs was essential to protect the environment. “As the ground is incredibly dry, we would need a few months of wet weather to help them return to their usual levels, so it’s really important that people keep taking steps to save water.”

Meanwhile, Thames Water has said its own temporary use ban will commence on 24 August across London and the Thames Valley, which were also declared to be “in drought” by the National Drought Group last week.

Thames explained it was fixing more than 1,100 leaks each week across its vast network of 20,000 miles of piping. It hopes the hosepipe ban will save a further 10% of water after the recent heatwaves have left resources lower than average. During the July heatwave the company supplied up to 2.9 billion litres daily. In some areas, demand was 50% higher than average for the time of year.

Groundwater levels throughout the region are declining towards levels that the company said “would only be expected once a decade”, and reservoir levels are the lowest for 30 years.

Sarah Bentley, chief executive, said the decision to implement a ban was difficult: “Despite investing in the largest leakage reduction programme in the UK, customer demand is at unprecedented levels and we now have to move into the next phase of our drought plan to conserve water, mitigate further risk and futureproof supplies.”

Without action being taken, the country is forecast to hit a water deficit of four billion litres of water daily by 2050, according to the National Infrastructure Commission, with at least one billion required in the populous Thames region.

Security of water supply will be a key theme at the Utility Week Forum on 8-9 November in London. Find out more here.