Wessex Water has published a Temporary Use Ban notice that takes effect at 00:01 on Tuesday 18 August 2026. Its own page states: "The hosepipe ban starts on Tuesday 18 August at 00:01hrs."
It is the company's first restriction in half a century. The notice records that "it's been 50 years since water restrictions were last needed in the Wessex Water region".
On who it covers, the notice is explicit, and states it twice: "The ban applies to all customers in our region who we supply with water." That is worth reading carefully, because press coverage of the announcement names Bath, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire, which reads like a list of the counties included. Those four are a description of where most Wessex Water customers live, not a limit on the ban. The restriction covers the whole water-supply area, including the parts of Gloucestershire and Hampshire it reaches, and the notice carries no exclusions.
Wessex Water supplies water to about 1.4 million people. It takes sewerage from about 2.8 million over a wider footprint, and that difference matters here: a Wessex Water sewerage bill does not make Wessex Water your water supplier, and the restriction follows the water supply. Check the water line on your bill.
The company cites record levels of demand sustained through the summer with no significant rain forecast. Its 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, and surface reservoir storage at 51 per cent of capacity, below average for the time of year.
The escalation was fast. On 11 August the company's director of water supply, Will Willoughby, called a ban "a last resort for us, and we don't want to introduce one", while warning that "if demand doesn't reduce, we will need to introduce more formal restrictions". The notice followed six days later.
One consequence is local and easy to miss. The BS postcode area is now split: Wessex Water customers there fall under this ban, and Bristol Water customers in the same postcode districts do not, because they are supplied by a different undertaker that has issued no such notice. Two neighbouring streets can have different answers.
Prohibited uses are the standard statutory list: watering a garden, cleaning a private vehicle, filling a domestic pool or paddling pool, cleaning walls, windows, paths and patios, and the rest of the eleven uses listed at section 76(2) of the Water Industry Act 1991. A watering can, a bucket and water you have collected yourself are never restricted. The maximum fine is 1,000 pounds, imposed by a magistrates' court on conviction.
Wessex Water frames its exemptions around its Priority Services Register and a list of named medical conditions rather than around Blue Badge status, so a concession list read from another company is no guide to this one. Check your postcode for the position at your address.