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South Staffs Water has asked customers to save water voluntarily. This is not a Temporary Use Ban: there is no legal restriction, nothing is prohibited, and there is no fine. The South Staffs Water supply area: Staffordshire and parts of the West Midlands. The appeal covers the 1.3 million people South Staffs Water supplies. You can use a hosepipe and a sprinkler as normal, and the company is asking you to think about whether you need to.
Voluntary conservation appeal, not a Temporary Use Ban. No legal restriction and no fine. The exact announcement date could not be confirmed from South Staffs Water's own site, which is JavaScript-rendered and did not return content to verification; the appeal is dated to July 2026 only. Cambridge Water is in the same group but supplies a separate region and DOES have a ban in force; the South Staffs area is not covered by it.
There is no legal restriction and no fine. South Staffs Water has asked customers to save water where they can.
We are an unofficial tracker, so South Staffs Water’s own notice is the version that legally applies to you.
South Staffs Water supplies 1.3 million people across Staffordshire and parts of the West Midlands, Worcestershire and Shropshire. It is a water-only company, so your sewerage comes from a different supplier and your sewerage bill says nothing about this status: the water supply line of the bill is the one that matters.
The distinction that catches people here is the group structure. Cambridge Water is the same company for regulatory purposes, trading in a separate region 100 miles away, and the two areas have separate water resources. Cambridge Water restricting use in Cambridgeshire does not restrict anything in Staffordshire, and headlines naming the group rather than the region have already produced that confusion once this season.
Source: South Staffs Water
This section is shorter than it should be, and the reason is worth stating plainly rather than padding around: South Staffs Water's website is JavaScript-rendered and returns no readable content to automated checks, so we cannot quote a resource position, a reservoir figure or a drought-plan trigger from it. What we have is the appeal itself, dated to July 2026, asking customers to use water carefully. The company has not published a date for it that we can confirm.
The comparison that is available is useful anyway. The same group's Cambridge region moved to a statutory restriction in July 2026 after one of the driest springs in recent years, citing a 30 per cent rise in demand. The Staffordshire region did not, which tells you the two resource positions diverged rather than that either company acted late.
Source: South Staffs Water
A Temporary Use Ban restricts a narrower set of things than most people expect, and it is worth knowing which before one is ever declared. The Water Use (Temporary Bans) Order 2010 lists eleven categories, starting with watering a garden, cleaning a private motor vehicle, watering plants on domestic or other non-commercial premises, cleaning a private leisure boat and running through pools, ponds, fountains, walls, windows, paths and patios.
A watering can, a bucket and water you have collected yourself are never restricted by a Temporary Use Ban. Indoor use is never restricted, and neither is non-mains water. South Staffs Water has asked for voluntary restraint on those same uses. Ignoring an appeal is not an offence and carries no penalty, which is the whole difference between the two instruments.
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If a Temporary Use Ban were in force here, breaching it would be a criminal offence. The maximum penalty is a fine of £1,000 on summary conviction, under section 76(5) of the Water Industry Act 1991. It is not a fixed penalty: South Staffs Water cannot issue one and would have to prosecute. In practice companies publish an enforcement policy that starts with a warning, so a first breach realistically produces a letter.
South Staffs Water has not been under a hosepipe restriction in recent seasons, and the current record here rests on a verified appeal rather than on a claim about its history, which we do not have from a primary source. What is documented is the group position: Cambridge Water dates its own last restriction to the 1995 drought, so neither region of this company has used section 76 powers in the intervening thirty years until the Cambridge notice in July 2026.
Recorded here this season for South Staffs Water: a voluntary appeal beginning 1 July 2026, running 31 days so far. Events are permanent. When one ends we set its end date and keep it, so this page can still say what ran and for how long.
Source: South Staffs Water
No. South Staffs Water has asked customers to save water voluntarily. There is no Temporary Use Ban, nothing is prohibited and there is no fine.
It could. A company can impose a Temporary Use Ban under section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991 without the regulator's permission, so this can change within days. For South Staffs Water it turns on its own drought plan.
Yes, both. No Temporary Use Ban applies in the South Staffs Water area, so hosepipes, sprinklers and pressure washers are all allowed.
Up to 1,000 pounds, imposed by a magistrates' court on conviction under section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991. It is not a fixed penalty: South Staffs Water would have to prosecute, and starts with a warning.
Usually, but not automatically everywhere. Most companies exempt Priority Services Register customers and Blue Badge holders who cannot reasonably use a can or bucket, some automatically and some on registration. South Staffs Water's own notice sets the wording.
Your water bill, on the water supply line rather than the sewerage line: in much of England and Wales those are two different companies. South Staffs Water supplies the south staffs water supply area: staffordshire and parts of the west midlands.
No. South Staffs Water and Cambridge Water share ownership but supply two separate regions with separate water resources, about 100 miles apart. The Cambridge notice applies to households billed by Cambridge Water. It does not extend to the Staffordshire or West Midlands supply area.
The supply area covers Staffordshire with parts of the West Midlands, Worcestershire and Shropshire, sitting inside the much larger Severn Trent sewerage area and bordering Cambridge Water not at all.
5 outward postcode districts resolve to South Staffs Water here, as primary supplier or as one candidate among several. An outward code is the part before the space: SO14, not SO14 3AB.
Town pages here: Stoke-on-Trent. Each resolves from its own outcode rather than this company's headline status, which matters most where a town sits outside a restriction its supplier has declared.
Source: South Staffs Water
Source of record: South Staffs Water’s own status page, last checked 30 July 2026. We do not publish a hosepipe ban on the strength of a news report; every status rests on a primary source.