{"id":938788,"date":"2026-10-24T03:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T03:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/938788\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T03:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T03:08:10","slug":"water-water-everywhere-but-swimming-pools-shut-over-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/938788\/","title":{"rendered":"Water, water everywhere, but swimming pools shut over drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public swimming pools face closure because of severe drought, despite warnings of a winter of flooding.<\/p>\n

Ministers will decide next week whether to impose even stricter rules on the use of water<\/a> in areas of the south of England under hosepipe bans.<\/p>\n

Two major water companies, South West Water<\/a> and South East Water, have submitted applications for a \u201cnon-essential use ban\u201d in their areas.<\/p>\n

The restrictions, which have not been used in Britain for 20 years, would cover businesses including public swimming pools, car washes, commercial window cleaners and gardeners.<\/p>\n

They would effectively close down any business that regularly uses water for \u201cnon-essential\u201d operations.<\/p>\n

Both companies<\/a> applied to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs earlier this month to impose the new rules on customers in Sussex and Devon.<\/p>\n

The Telegraph understands that Angela Eagle, the Environment Secretary, has fast-tracked the applications because of concerns about reservoir levels<\/a> in those areas, and will issue a ruling within days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Public swimming pools face closure because of severe drought, despite warnings of a winter of flooding. Ministers will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":938789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,68,4358,75,217288,18630,444036,44,84,128,156,14059,505197],"class_list":["post-938788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-climate-change","tag-drought","tag-environment","tag-environment-agency","tag-flooding","tag-hosepipe-bans","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-standard","tag-top-story","tag-water-and-sanitation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}