South East Water customers urged to continue reducing water usage at peak times

Although temperatures have cooled since the record-breaking hot weather last week, we're continuing to urge all businesses to do their bit to ensure there is enough water for all - businesses, households and our vulnerable customers.

Demand across our supply area is far higher than average during the summer, and with the warm and dry weather continuing, our resources are becoming increasingly stretched.

Water is vital for health and with water use in some areas outstripping the amount we can supply, we need everyone to only use water for essential purposes.

Our daily water demand graph highlights the millions of additional litres of water we're treating, pumping and supplying each day. On average we're treating an additional 120 million litres of water a day, the equivalent of 4 towns the size of Maidstone.

What can customers do?

The main thing you could do to help is to try and reduce your water use by 10 per cent, especially during our daily peaks of 7:30 to 10:00 both morning and evening. Small changes make a big difference, for example:

  • Put away the hose
  • Check for leaks on toilets, taps and urinals. Even a small constant dribble can waste up to 400 litres a day.
  • Educate your employees on being more water efficient - from turning off taps to using the small flush, there's actions we can all take to save water
  • Delay any non-critical water use until the temperatures start to fall
  • Order some water-saving freebies

If every business took these simple steps it will help us keep taps flowing during the coming days - for you, and the rest of our 2.3 million customers across south east England.

For more top water saving tips, visit our non-household website.

And don’t forget to keep an eye on our website for daily updates.

For more information read our latest blog post, Water efficiency for businesses during a heatwave.