New campaign urges public to reduce water use as UK emerges from heatwave

South East Water banned hosepipes during the heatwave and other companies encouraged reduced water use. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA View image in fullscreen South East Water banned hosepipes during the heatwave and other companies encouraged reduced water use. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA New campaign urges public to reduce water use as UK emerges from heatwave Exclusive: £75m publicity drive will ask people to treat water as precious resource and cut daily use by 28 litres The biggest ever campaign to encourage the public to reduce their water use will launch this week, as the UK emerges from record temperatures attributed to the climate crisis. The £75m publicity drive, called Let’s Save Water , will advise and encourage people to treat water as a precious resource and has a target for everyone to cut their daily use by 28 litres – or two large buckets – from the current average use of about 140 litres a day. A partnership involving water companies, the water regulator Ofwat, the Environment Agency , the Met Office and Natural Resources Wales is behind the campaign, which will be paid for by water companies over four years. Water use in England and Wales is among the highest in Europe, with countries such as Germany and the Netherlands averaging 120 litres a person a day by comparison. A team of behavioural psychologists are advising the campaign, which aims to change attitudes to water use. “The critical issue is, how do we make people believe water is an important resource?” said Prof Thomas Webb, a social psychologist at the University of Sheffield. “So we need to change assumptions. We need to make people aware of how much water they are using and help them see this as a collective effort, and something they can be proud of.” Water shortages in England and Wales are predicted to reach 5bn litres a day by 2055 – equivalent to a shortfall of 2,000 Olympic-sized pools – as a result of climate change, population increases and the expansion of water-intensive industries such as datacentres. But research for the campaign reveals that people have no idea how much water they use , and are underestimating their useage by a factor of about five – on average, people believe they use about 30 litres a day, compared with actual usage of about 140 litres. A hosepipe ban came into effect in Kent on Friday morning, days after South East Water urged customers to use water sparingly as demand increased in the heatwave. Prof Lizzie Kendon, the strategic head of climate processes and projections at the Met Office , said: “Climate change is driving increasingly extreme weather patterns, with wetter winters, drier summers and more intense bursts of rainfall. “When rain falls on dry, hardened ground, much of it cannot soak into the soil, where it is most valuable, instead it runs off and is being lost. There is an urgent need for action.” The campaign is calling for the public to make small everyday changes to their habits to reduce water use – such as taking shorter