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Status checked 16 September 2026, against Wessex Water’s own notice dated 17 August 2026.
Yes. A Wessex Water hosepipe ban has been in force since 00:01 on 18 August 2026, and it covers its whole water supply area, including Bath, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire, about 1.4 million customers. It is Wessex Water's first hosepipe ban in 50 years. You cannot use a hosepipe to water a garden, wash a car or fill a paddling pool, and the maximum fine is 1,000 pounds. A watering can and a bucket are still allowed.
You cannot use a hosepipe or sprinkler at home. A watering can or bucket is still fine, and the maximum fine is £1,000.
We are an unofficial tracker, so Wessex Water’s own notice is the version that legally applies to you.
At 00:01 on Tuesday 18 August 2026. Wessex Water's own notice, dated 17 August 2026, states: "The hosepipe ban starts on Tuesday 18 August at 00:01hrs." No end date has been announced, so it runs until the company lifts it.
Everyone Wessex Water supplies with drinking water. The notice is explicit and says it twice: "The ban applies to all customers in our region who we supply with water." Press coverage names Bath, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire, which is where most of those customers live rather than a limit on the ban: it also reaches parts of Gloucestershire and Hampshire, and carries no exclusions.
The company that bills you for WATER is the one whose rules apply, and it is not always the company that handles your sewerage. Wessex Water takes sewerage from a wider area than it supplies water to, so a Wessex Water sewerage bill does not put you under this ban. Check the water line on your bill, or check your postcode.
Check your postcode for the position at your address.
Using a hosepipe to water a garden, clean a private vehicle, fill or maintain a domestic swimming or paddling pool, fill an ornamental fountain, or clean walls, windows, paths and patios. Those are among the eleven uses listed at section 76(2) of the Water Industry Act 1991, and a company cannot add to them.
A watering can, a bucket, and water you have collected yourself are never restricted by a Temporary Use Ban. Neither is water that did not come through the mains, so a hosepipe fed from a water butt or a borehole sits outside the notice. Indoor use is not affected.
Customers who cannot make reasonable adjustments because of a health condition or disability. Wessex Water names physical impairments, restricted hand movement, post-hospital recovery, a need for a stairlift, hoist or electric bed, respiratory conditions requiring a ventilator or oxygen, and other chronic or serious illness. It works from its Priority Services Register rather than from Blue Badge status, which is how most other companies frame it, so a list read elsewhere is no guide to this one.
Using a hosepipe for health and safety, for animal welfare, and for some business services and activities is also outside the restrictions. The company publishes the full list with its notice.
Demand, more than storage. Chief executive Ruth Jefferson said that "the prolonged and extreme dry weather has meant demand across our region has consistently remained at more than 400 million litres per day, 30 per cent above average for this time of year", reported by ITV News West Country on 17 August 2026. The company's own resources update for the week of 10 August recorded 2.24mm of rainfall in July, 4 per cent of the monthly long-term average, with reservoir storage at 51 per cent of capacity.
On the decision itself: "After 50 years without a hosepipe ban in the Wessex Water region, the first since the famous drought of 1976, this isn't a decision we've made lightly and we're sorry for the inconvenience it will cause." It is a fast escalation. On 11 August the company's director of water supply was still describing a ban as a last resort it did not want to reach for; the notice followed six days later.
Ruth Jefferson quoted by ITV News West Country, 17 August 2026. Resource figures from Wessex Water’s own water resources update.
The maximum is level 3 on the standard scale, currently £1,000, under section 76(5) of the Water Industry Act 1991. It is not a fixed penalty and Wessex Water cannot issue one itself: breaching a Temporary Use Ban is a criminal offence under section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991, and the company would have to prosecute. In practice enforcement starts with a letter.
The BS postcode area is split. Wessex Water supplies part of it, and Bristol Water, a separate undertaker, supplies the city itself. Two neighbouring streets in the same postcode district can be under different rules, so BS is the one place where the answer genuinely depends on the address rather than the district.
Is there a hosepipe ban in Bristol? explains the split in full.
Yes. Wessex Water published a Temporary Use Ban notice dated 17 August 2026, which states that the ban "starts on Tuesday 18 August at 00:01hrs" and "applies to all customers in our region who we supply with water". It is the company's first restriction in 50 years.
The whole water supply area. Those four are named in press coverage because that is where most Wessex Water customers live, not because the notice stops there. It also reaches parts of Gloucestershire and Hampshire, and lists no excluded areas.
Yes. A Temporary Use Ban restricts hosepipes, not watering. A watering can, a bucket, and water you have collected in a butt are never restricted, and neither is a hosepipe fed from a non-mains source such as a borehole.
Not on that basis. Wessex Water takes sewerage from a wider area than it supplies with drinking water, and a hosepipe ban follows the water supply. Check the water line on your bill: if another company is named there, that company's rules apply to you.
Wessex Water frames its exemptions around its own Priority Services Register and a list of named conditions, so registered customers with those needs are covered. It does not use Blue Badge status as the test, which many other companies do, so check its own list rather than assuming from another company's.
No end date has been announced. A Temporary Use Ban runs until the company lifts it, and companies lift them after sustained rain rather than on a fixed date, so it can outlast the weather that prompted it.