UK Hosepipe Bans Spark Frustration and Culture War Over Exemptions

‘Plants are like your babies,” says Harry. And accordingly, he argues, most people would do anything to keep them alive, including break the law. This is what he plans to do this week – defying a hosepipe ban in place across large parts of England, to ensure his shrubs maintain a steady pulse.

He may not be alone. On Tuesday, Thames Water became the latest company to ban hosepipes – a restriction that will affect more than 10 million people. Since mid-July, Welsh Water, Anglian Water, Affinity Water (serving Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Surrey), Southern Water and Cambridge Water have all announced hosepipe bans. And earlier this week, South East Water extended its existing ban to cover an additional 1.5 million.

Harry, 24, has spoken to friends and family in his leafy corner of Essex who are equally fed up with the ban that has been in place on and off since the beginning of July. “Unless they turn the taps off, I’m still going to use it,” he says. “It’s another thing that makes people say they want to leave the UK, these silly little rules.”

Others are using the ban to stoke up division. Suella Braverman MP says it’s yet another “act of lunacy in Labour’s two-tier Britain”. The Reform UK politician was responding to a Telegraph front page declaring that benefit claimants are exempt from the hosepipe ban. The Conservative party chair, Kevin Hollinrake, also chimed in, calling it a “kick in the hosepipe”.

Despite the furore the exemption has caused, the truth is that it does not apply to all those who claim benefits: households that qualify to be on a water company’s priority services register would need to be benefits claimants who have either three or more children, or someone with a medical condition that requires the use of significant amounts of water – dialysis, for example. Disabled people and blue badge holders are also exempt.

Regardless of this much more nuanced reality, the hosepipe ban has become the subject of a new culture war, an attempt to pit the haves (in this scenario, poor and disabled people, who are allowed more water) against the have-nots (able-bodied people with an earned income).

Why has the ban been put in place, anyway? The answer, as with so many things, is the climate crisis. In 2025, the UK recorded its hottest year ever. According to the Met Office, 2026 is already showing hotter and drier conditions than last year – with three heatwaves to date. Daniel Johns, the managing director at the non-profit Water Resources East, says river levels have reached “all-time lows”. In May, a House of Lords report said England faces a 5bn-litre-a-day water shortfall by 2055. Water companies, says Johns, have been left with “no choice” but to impose hosepipe bans because the “hot weather has led households to use more water than ever before, depleting rivers and reservoirs at concerning rates” – which, if left unchecked, could lead to even more severe water shortages.

But Harry says his ire isn’t directed towards vulnerable people who can still use their hosepipes. Instead, he blames water companies – which, according to water regulator Ofwat, lose almost 3bn litres of drinking water a day in England and Wales through leaking pipes. That’s five times more than even a nationwide hosepipe ban could save, says Greenpeace UK.

Another thing guzzling our water supplies is the rise of AI, which Harry also hit out against. There are 450-plus AI datacentres in the UK, with more planned, which require enormous amounts of water to cool servers. On Tuesday, the water industry warned that these plans were “fatally flawed” as the policies make “not a single mention of water”. Water UK said that more than two-thirds of existing datacentres are in the south and south-east of England, where many of the hosepipe bans are in place. The Government Digital Sustainability Alliance, a public-private group led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has already warned that AI is predicted to lead to an increase in global water usage from 1.1bn to 6.6bn cubic metres by 2027 – in other words, equivalent to more than half of the UK’s total water usage. “Is it really gardeners at fault?” Harry says.

Harry plans to water his plants using a hose, but others have shared how they will more discreetly flout the ban – one TikTok user appears to hide a hosepipe inside a watering can, so a powerful stream emerges from its spout. Some are connecting their hosepipes to buckets being constantly refilled by a running tap to technically remain compliant, despite the large amounts of water still being used.

I speak to Harry in a leafy suburb of Harlow, which is filled with beautiful homes and thriving, well-kept front gardens. Most of the people I meet are planning to comply with the ban, including an elderly woman, whose hands are shaking while she tends a hanging plant with a watering can. She says the ban has “massively impacted her” and she doesn’t want her “beautiful garden” to be ruined.

Isabella, 24, who works in a garden centre, understands why the ban is in place and will comply with it, switching the hose for a watering can and now having to wake up extra early before work. “It takes me 40 minutes to water my plants, whereas it normally takes me 15 minutes,” she says. Some of her customers, who have an exemption from the ban, have told her they “feel like they’re being watched by their neighbours”, especially when tending their front gardens. They are “scared that neighbours will call the police on them so they feel too intimidated to use their hoses”, she says. However, she does understand why her customers “find it frustrating” to restrict their hosepipe use. “It’s just another thing on top of the issues they’re already facing,” she says.

For disabled people, the feeling of being watched and scrutinised is familiar. Maddy Alexander-Grout, a 42-year-old disability advocate and ADHD coach from Southampton, informs people on social media about the benefits and support they might not be aware they are entitled to. She has been dubbed a “sickfluencer” by the tabloids, a label she refutes. “I give disabled people information that they don’t always have access to, because the government doesn’t want people to know about it,” she says.

Anger over the hosepipe ban is the latest culture war furore to target disabled people, despite the fact that the WaterSure tariff – the scheme at the heart of this new controversy – was introduced back in 1999. It comes after a rightwing campaign that has taken aim at Motability, a longstanding scheme that leases 300,000 cars a year to people with mobility problems. A social media and tabloid campaign spread the idea that it was offering disabled people “free” BMWs and Mercedes. In reality, the scheme allows people with serious disabilities to get a car by using a portion of their benefits to pay for a three-year lease, after which the vehicle is returned, with newer cars preferred because they can be resold for a higher price afterwards, saving the taxpayer money.

Following the campaign – which had support from Reform MP Robert Jenrick, who called the scheme “farcical”, and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who said it was a “scam” – Motability was the main target for significant welfare cuts in last year’s autumn budget. Earlier this month, the Treasury said these cuts would “save taxpayers” £1bn by 2030. Rachel Reeves, the then chancellor, denied the campaign was behind the decision. “Disabled people are getting the brunt of everything,” says Grout.

She says there are very valid reasons that disabled people need access to a hosepipe, especially in the scorching heat. Grout has a number of disabilities, including postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which can affect all unconscious bodily functions, including heart rate, blood flow, breathing and digestion; Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune condition that can cause extreme fatigue and sensitivity to temperature; and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which can cause joint hypermobility. This means she sometimes needs to use a wheelchair.

Grout needs access to a hosepipe to cool down when outdoors because of her Hashimoto’s disease, and to clean her wheelchair, especially when it’s been in a “dusty area and it’s too dirty to bring into the house”. She says other disabled people might need to clean mobility equipment to “wash off bodily fluids” and, for those with respiratory conditions, to clean dusty outside spaces that may cause wheezing.

Although she’s concerned about the rising anger over the ban, she says disabled people should also be sensible and do their bit, where possible, to reduce their water usage. “It’s about common sense, being considerate of others and not rubbing it in people’s faces,” she says. Many disabled people, she adds, “would give up their benefits and a hosepipe to have even a few days where their health wasn’t a problem”.

Laura Greasley is hardly a rule-breaker. She does as much as she can to conserve water, collecting grey water (lightly used water from, say, a bath, shower or washing machine) when possible, and using water butts because “we take individual responsibility really seriously”. However, a pipe outside her home has been leaking for a year. She can hear it when cars drive by, splashing through the wasted water.

Still, her countryside property in the Norfolk Broads is now under a hosepipe ban. After such a long spell of dry weather, her water butt is empty, so instead she has been taking her fill from the untended leak outside her home. She says she “would be happy to support a hosepipe ban under normal circumstances”, but this time she is doing it begrudgingly. “It’s exceptionally frustrating to have leaks outside your house, wasting litres of water, and seeing that it doesn’t appear to be prioritised.”

Her garden is “suffering” as a result of the ban, and her family is “having to work a lot harder” to keep everything alive. “People are extremely frustrated that they’re being asked to sacrifice the gardens they put a lot of time and investment into when the water companies don’t seem to be doing anything to fix these problems. The system is really being run into the ground and people have had enough.”

Vanessa Speight, a water systems professor at the University of Sheffield, says it’s time to replace the ageing, decaying pipes that carry the nation’s water. Of the pipes in our infrastructure that have been examined, the average age is 80. “This means there are some that are a lot older than 80,” she says. Some are weaker than others, particularly those built in the aftermath of the second world war, “when metal was difficult to find”.

Water companies have to justify their spending to Ofwat during the price review process, where the regulator can determine the highest price firms can charge customers. As part of this process, the economic level of leakage is calculated (where the cost of reducing leaks is weighed up against the cost of lost water). The conclusion, Speight says, tends to be that “pipes are very expensive and water is fairly cheap to produce, meaning it’s never going to be economical to replace the pipes”. Privatisation is a factor, too, she adds, leaving the UK in a “difficult situation, where everything about the water systems is monetised or turned into an economic value, but you can’t put a value on water when you run out”.

And running out is a real concern. While the UK’s climate is becoming wetter overall, with winters being defined by punishing rainfall and devastating flooding, our summers are becoming hotter and dryer. The government has been warned that rainwater harvesting, along with other household measures such as taking shorter showers, is needed to avoid severe water shortages in England.

“The distribution of rain is what’s changing, and that’s really hurting the UK, because the reservoir storage that would be required to cope is not there,” says Speight. “We can’t live like a wet country any more; we have to live like a drier country.”

Still, she understands why the hosepipe ban has hit a nerve. “It feels more frustrating as people become aware of water issues and frustrated with the water companies for totally unrelated scenes like wastewater overflows,” she says. Overhauling our water infrastructure will come with a lot of disruption, though. “Unfortunately, it means construction, roadways being disturbed and traffic being diverted. All the things people hate in the short term – but it’s necessary,” she says. And the good news is that if our pipes were fixed, Speight says the need for hosepipe bans “would likely be very small”.

Gardeners are locked in a battle with our changing climate. Some plants that have long been staples in English gardens are now struggling to survive. Tim Parry, a gardener in the Isle of Wight, points to hydrangeas as an example: “They are a very thirsty plant.” He suggests we gravitate towards plants that can tolerate drought, such as Phoenix canariensis (Canary Island date palm) and Trachycarpus fortunei (Chusan palm), both of which require less watering in the long term.

Parry recommends being smart about which plants to water. “Some are a lot hardier than you think, particularly your lawn. It might look dry, brown and horrible right now, but it will come back.”

Nevertheless, it can have a profound impact on people when a plant doesn’t make it. “Plants aren’t just something you stick in your garden,” Parry says, “they have sentimental value. It could be a rose grown in your pot with your grandfather’s ashes, or a tree that you planted in memory of somebody. They’re so important to people.” And more beautiful and meaningful plants could die off as the UK’s climate changes beyond recognition.

“This time round, I feel it’s come on all of a sudden,” says Parry of the drought-like conditions that have scorched gardens. “We’re not talking August. This started happening in late June. I fear for what the future holds.”