{"id":685725,"date":"2026-07-11T08:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T08:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/685725\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T08:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T08:33:12","slug":"what-is-a-hosepipe-ban-why-are-they-needed-and-who-decides-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/685725\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a hosepipe ban, why are they needed and who decides them?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">United Utilities&#8217; supply area includes the Lake District, one of the wettest regions in England. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This gives the company more resilient water resources compared with many other water companies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For example, last year, it avoided a drought despite reservoirs being lower than usual.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It said it used &#8220;its vast interconnected system of treatment works and pipes to move water from one part of the region to another to &#8216;top up&#8217; areas that are lower&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A wet start to the year also helped reservoirs recover from last year&#8217;s dry spring, with storage levels above where they were at this point in 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">UU also said leakage levels were at their lowest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is currently fixing about 900 leaks a week and targeting a 26% reduction by 2030.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">So far this year, it has fixed 23,481 leaks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is also investing \u00a3380m to upgrade more than 925km (575 miles) of water mains with more durable, flexible pipes to help reduce bursts and leakage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United Utilities&#8217; supply area includes the Lake District, one of the wettest regions in England. This gives the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-685725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}