Hosepipe ban could run into 2026, water boss says

Yorkshire Water’s hosepipe ban could last into the new year, despite recent heavy rainfall.

Dave Kaye, the company’s director of water, said that while reservoir levels had risen for the first time in seven months, persistent rainfall would be required for the rest of the year before the ban could be lifted.

“I would anticipate it would be towards the back end of this year or early next year,” he added.

When asked if customers should get money back because they had been unable to use a hose since the ban came into force in July, Mr Kaye said: “No, because people can use watering cans… there’s plenty of sources.”

Mr Kaye also acknowledged that revelations about £1.3m in extra pay for the chief executive, Nicola Shaw, had “not landed well”, but insisted she was “doing a good job”.

Earlier this month, the government asked the water regulator, Ofwat, to carry out an urgent review into the payments, which were separate from her £689,000 salary.

Yorkshire Water said the payments were made by its parent company, Kelda Holdings, and noted in annual reports. However, it has acknowledged it should have been “more transparent”.

Yorkshire Water is one of six firms banned from paying “unfair” bonuses to executives, under rules that came into force in June. And in March, it was ordered to pay £40m by the regulator Ofwat to address its “serious failures” over wastewater and sewage.

Asked by BBC Look North if he understood why customers were angry over the payments to Ms Shaw when bills were going up and the company had been fined for failing, Mr Kaye said: “Of course I can understand why people are frustrated.

“Our chief executive declined her bonus because of the poor performance we’ve had in Yorkshire.

He said the Kelda money “was a fee”, rather than a bonus, “for work that she did for stakeholders”.

In June, residents in Cherry Burton, East Yorkshire, claimed a pipe had been leaking for months, despite an attempt by the utility firm to fix it earlier this year.

Mr Kaye was asked why it took so long to fix leaks.

“I don’t think we are slow,” he said. “We try to get out and fix leaks as quickly as we possibly can. We focus on big leaks that lose a lot of water and we try and focus on the visible leaks.”

Mr Kaye said the company was fixing 800 leaks a week but some could not be fixed quickly because local authorities sometimes required work to be done under permit at weekends or out of hours.

He pointed to plans to invest £8.3bn across Yorkshire over the next five years.

“We’ve reduced leakage by 15% over the last five years,” he added. “We are going to do much more in the next five years as well.”