Households warned to avoid hosepipes as water supplies dry up in heatwave

Households have been warned not to use hosepipes in the heatwave as supplies slowed to a trickle and water companies struggled to keep up with demand.

People were urged to put away garden sprinklers, take short showers instead of baths, use watering cans to water their plants and buckets to clean their cars.

Huge spikes in demand for water at mornings and evening peak times forced utility companies to pump billions more litres of water that usual into the system, but they said they were still struggling to keep taps flowing.

In some areas of Kent, Hertfordshire supplies cut out completely, and industry body Water UK warned customers to expect a drop in their water pressure, urging people to make changes to save supplies.

Some parts of Staffordshire and Shropshire have seen supplies temporarily interrupted as a result of high demand, prompting Severn Water to set up bottled water collection points "as a precaution".

Overnight tanker crews also injected water directly into pipes in the region to keep customers supplied with water.

Severn Trent said there was plenty of water in reservoirs, and it had put an extra 300 million litres of water into its pipes on Wednesday, but the network could only carry "so much water".

Doug Clarke, Severn Trent's water efficiency expert, said: “We need people to think about how they're using water - using a sprinkler might green up your lawn but that water would be better used for drinking or washing."

He added: “This is all about being neighbourly.

"Just think about whether you're making the absolute best of the drinking water we're producing for you and your neighbours."

Customers in some parts of the Home Counties served by Affinity Water also saw water trickling to a stop as a result of soaring demand for water in peak periods and said they were being forced to take water from neighbouring reservoirs.

An Affinity Water spokesman said: "We usually supply on average 900 million litres of water each day to 3.6 million people and we have had to significantly increase this to meet demand due to the hot weather.

"This demand is averaging at 1.2 billion litres of water per day, but at times this has peaked to 1.6 billion litres of water in a single day.

"We are asking all customers to use water wisely, to reduce the demand on our network."

The company is urging people to adopt measures such as watering the garden with a watering can, teaming up children with their friends for paddling pool dates to avoid filling up too many pools and to not worry about the lawn going brown.

Elsewhere people served by Southern Water "may experience low pressure overnight as we refill the network to exceptionally high water demand. This is likely to be ongoing for the next few nights", the company said.

But rain in winter and spring had helped recharge reservoirs and groundwater supplies, so there were unlikely to be any restrictions such as hosepipe bans this summer, Southern Water said.

Despite seeing high demand, other companies were reporting no heatwave-related problems or threat of hosepipe bans, but called on households to conserve water.