27 million now under hosepipe bans
Drought has spread to nine of England's 14 water regions, and farmers say the country's food supply is now exposed.
Drought now covers 71.3% of England, the Environment Agency confirmed on Sunday, after the driest July on record left nine of its 14 water regions officially short of water and pushed hosepipe bans 2026 across large parts of the country. Farmers say the shortage is now hitting the food on Britain’s shelves.
The figures are stark. England’s rivers are running low across 78% of the network, with the Thames at Reading and the Cam at Dernford at record lows for the time of year. National reservoir storage sits almost 12% below the long-term average. Some parts of Devon went 50 days without rain this summer; Hampshire went 49. Nationally, July rainfall came in at just 7% of the long-term average, and in southern England at 1%.
This is the third drought in England in five years, after 2022 and 2025, and it is landing on farms with no financial cushion left. The 2025 harvest was already poor, and the National Farmers’ Union’s 2026 survey now puts average wheat yields at 6.8 tonnes per hectare, down from 7.2 last year and well below the 10-year average of 7.9. Livestock farmers are dipping into winter feed stores early because summer grass hasn’t grown.
Behind the shortfall sits a longer story. No new reservoir has been built in England in three decades, even as privatised water companies paid out dividends to shareholders. Havant Thicket in Hampshire, now under construction, will be the first. Meanwhile the Country Land and Business Association says farmers face an average £45,000 in permission costs alone before they can even start building an on-farm reservoir, a barrier that prices out smallholders while larger agribusiness with existing capital and storage rides out the dry spell.
“We can’t produce food without water,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw. “We must create a more resilient food system to feed the 29 million households across the country.” The Environment Agency’s director of water, Helen Wakeham, put it more bluntly: “We are currently using water faster than nature can replenish it.”
Hosepipe bans 2026: who pays for Britain’s water crisis this winter More than 27 million people are now living under hosepipe bans across at least nine water companies, up from 23 million a fortnight ago, after South West Water extended its ban to its entire supply area on 8 August. That inconvenience is minor next to what is coming for shoppers. Annual food inflation has actually eased, from 3.0% in May to 2.2% in June, but fruit and vegetables are already rising, up 1.7% on the year. The Food and Drink Federation warns the harvest shortfall, and poor grain crops pushing up animal feed costs, have not yet worked through to prices on the shelf. That pressure, industry says, is expected in autumn and winter.
Ministers are not standing entirely still. Water minister Emma Hardy points to a £104bn programme of reservoir and pipe investment running to 2050, and chaired the National Drought Group this month with NFU input. But England and Wales still lose an estimated 2.87 billion litres of treated water a day to leaking pipes, according to Greenpeace UK, a standing failure that predates this summer and will outlast it. A £45,000 planning bill to store rainwater is not a market solving a drought. It is the bill for thirty years without one.
