Hosepipe ban map shows all 10 counties hit with restrictions - check your area

Thames Water has announced a hosepipe ban will begin next Tuesday. (Image: Getty)

Ten counties have been hit with hosepipe bans so far this year after drought conditions were declared in England. Today, Thames Water announced that a hosepipe ban would begin next Tuesday. The temporary ban will begin on July 22 for all customers in OX postcodes, all GL postcodes, all SN postcodes, as well as customers in RG4, RG8 and RG9 postcodes. The ban does not affect businesses where hosepipe use is part of their purpose, such as car washes or garden centres.

Thames Water said there is less water available and a higher demand after a prolonged period of hot weather, with customers reportedly using up to 30% more when the temperature exceeds 25C. Nevil Muncaster, strategic water resources director at Thames Water, said: "We have to take action now." 

He contunued: "This has been a challenging spring and summer with big spikes in customer demand during hot dry days and very little rainfall to replenish local supplies in the Thames Valley."

This comes after Yorkshire Water announced a hosepipe ban of its own on Friday, affecting 5.5 million residents. It said the county received just 15cm of rainfall between February and June, less than half of what's expected in an average year.

Yorkshire Water’s director of water, Dave Kaye, said: "Introducing these restrictions is not a decision we have taken lightly, and we’ve been doing everything we can to avoid having to put them in place.

"Our region experienced an extremely dry spring, which resulted in the region entering drought status in June.

"Usually, spring is a time when our groundwater sources and reservoirs continue to be topped up by changeable weather, but this has not been the case in 2025, with our reservoir stocks falling since the last week of January."

Just hours after, South East Water announced a ban affecting 1.4 million of its customers in Kent and Sussex after record levels of water usage.

Demand across the counties had reached "the highest levels" this year and "reached a point where they have exceeded the limits in the company’s drought plan", it said.

The 10 affected counties are: Kent, Sussex, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, North Yorkshire, East Riding of Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire.

These bans come after the Environment Agency placed northwest England under "drought" status in May. It said reservoir storage levels were already lower than they were during the 1984, 1995 and 2022 drought years.