Water company sees demand surge by 30% in heatwave

Demand for water has surged during the recent hot weather

A water company has urged customers to "use a little less" as it has seen a 30% increase in demand during the recent hot spell.

Anglian Water supplies homes and businesses in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Milton Keynes, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and parts of Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Essex.

The company said on a "normal day" it would supply roughly 1.1 billion litres of drinking water to its 4.3 million customers, but this week that had risen to 1.4 billion litres.

It said it wanted people to "use a little less wherever they can, so we can meet the demand and keep taps running for everyone".

England is currently under an amber heat health weather warning and temperatures are expected to widely top 30C.

Ian Rule, the director of water services at Anglian Water, said: "On a normal day, we supply roughly 1.1 billion litres of top-quality drinking water to our 4.3 million customers across the East of England, but with temperatures predicted to climb we know we'll exceed this by several hundreds of millions of litres a day as long as the hot weather is here, which will be a new record for this early in the summer."

The company warned that increased usage could result in reduced water pressure, but said it had "an army of engineers working hard already to ensure everything is in the best shape possible before the hottest weather hits".

People are being urged to use a little less water

Mr Rule said the region's water supplies were in "relatively good health" and reservoirs were almost 90% full.

However, urging people to be mindful of how much water they were using, he said: "We can't afford to be reckless with the supplies we have available."

The company suggested several ways in which to save on water usage including learning to "love your brown lawn" - and if it was in "desperate need" to use saved rain water from a butt or old bath water rather than a hose or sprinkler.

It also said while it recognised paddling pools were a good way to keep children cool, by covering the pool with a fitted sheet overnight the water could be used for another day.

Last month Anglian Water confirmed it had "no plans" to enforce a hosepipe ban across the East of England.