Severn Trent is among the water companies facing pressure after England’s Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales declared half of England and the whole of Wales in drought this week. July was on track to become the driest month on record. The declaration lands while 23 million people across England and Wales are already under a hosepipe ban.
England and Wales in July
England had just 7% of the long-term average rainfall for July, while Southern England had 1%. The Thames at Reading recorded its lowest ever level. Those figures show how quickly the dry spell has moved beyond short-term nuisance into a wider water shortage, even before the month had finished.
England’s Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales made the drought announcements this week, the third such event over the past five years. The Met Office said climate change will make UK summers 1C-6C hotter and up to 60% drier by 2070 compared with 1990. Dr Chloe Brimicombe, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, said: "This summer has been a compounding of dry weather," and "Climate change is not a future problem; it’s a challenge for right now."
Riverford Organic Farmers
Luke King, supply chain and technical director at Riverford Organic Farmers, said: "Scarcity of water has become a big challenge for us, but what has compounded this has been the heat stress on plants." He added: "All but one of our [four] reservoirs have now run dry, which is something we’d never normally expect". On the farm, that leaves one reservoir still holding water out of four.
The drought has come during four record-breaking heatwaves since May, with firefighters responding to 393 wildfires across England and Wales in July. North Wales Fire and Rescue Service recorded 48 wild, grassland, woodland and crop fires in June, up 47% on the same month in 2025. Water companies were not currently expecting a threat to drinking water supplies, but the scale of the drought leaves households, farms and fire crews relying on rainfall and rising water levels to ease pressure.
The next shift will depend on whether rainfall lifts river levels and reservoir supplies enough to ease the bans and the drought designation. For now, the practical reality for affected households is simple: conserve water while the dry conditions continue.
