Water companies deserve some sympathy in the face of extreme weather conditions

Water companies have been heavily criticised over various failings to ensure sufficient supply of clean water and the damage that they have done to the environment.

And customers are rightly angered when restrictions are put in place over the amount of water that they can use, especially when not enough investment has been made into the infrastructure with money instead being frittered away on executive pay and shareholder dividends.

However, the extreme weather conditions that Britain has experienced this summer is a mitigating factor that cannot be overlooked when accounting for the performance of water companies.

Earlier this summer, Yorkshire Water CEO, Nicola Shaw told The Yorkshire Post: “I absolutely do not expect to have a hosepipe ban in Yorkshire this summer.”

While that is still the case, there is no official hosepipe ban in the region, the company is asking customers to try and avoid using hosepipes and take shorter showers, amid the latest heatwave.

Given that the National Drought Group moved Yorkshire into prolonged dry weather status earlier this week, the stage before drought, it was inevitable that households were going to be asked to do their bit.

What Britain is currently experiencing is unprecedented but there is clearly a pattern of more frequent extreme weather spells. The Prime Minister’s Cobra meeting to discuss the hot and dry weather amounts to little more than theatre. The country needs a meaningful long-term strategy to enable it to adapt to extreme weather conditions.