71% of England in drought after record dry July 2026

England’s drought story has moved from warning to daily reality. In the latest government update, four more areas - East Midlands, Lincolnshire & Northamptonshire, Kent & East Sussex, and Solent & the South Downs - were placed in drought. They join East Anglia, London and Hertfordshire, the Thames Valley, Devon & Cornwall, Wessex and the West Midlands. The Environment Agency and the National Drought Group say 71.3% of England is now in drought, around 45 million people live in a drought area, and more than 27 million are already under water-use restrictions.\n\nThat can sound like a distant policy announcement, but it is not. If you live in one of the affected regions, drought status is about the water in your local river, the pressure on your local supply, the crops being grown nearby, and the rules you may already be seeing from your water company. It also tells us something bigger: this is now the third drought in five years, after 2022 and 2025, which makes it harder to treat these summers as rare one-offs.

To make sense of this, it helps to know how the system works. **What drought status means:** it is not simply another word for hot weather. It is a formal sign that very low rainfall and high temperatures are putting real pressure on rivers, reservoirs, groundwater, farms, public water supplies and wildlife. The government says much of England is in a flash drought, which develops quickly when heat and lack of rain arrive together.\n\nAreas not yet in drought are not back to normal. The North East and Yorkshire have moved into prolonged dry weather, which is the stage just before drought, while Cumbria & Lancashire and Greater Manchester, Merseyside & Cheshire are also in that category. In other words, nowhere in England is now classed as normal. That is why this matters beyond the south and east: even where taps are still running as usual, the warning lights are already on.

The speed of this shift has a clear cause. The government describes July 2026 as the driest July in 190 years, and the Met Office says England and Wales also recorded their driest and sunniest July on record. Across England, July rainfall ranged from just 1% of the long-term average in the south-east to 26% in the north-west. By the time this update was published, only 5% of the expected August rainfall had arrived.\n\nHeat has added to the strain. England has already had 34 days this year with temperatures reaching 30C or above somewhere in the country, including 13 days in a row during July. Some parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and West Sussex had gone 59 days without a rainy day. The Met Office also warned there was no strong signal for a long spell of widespread rain through the rest of August and into September, with below-average rainfall more likely overall. When you put those pieces together, drought starts to look less like a dramatic label and more like a plain description of what the weather has done.

The damage shows up first in places many of us do not see every day. Reservoir storage in England has fallen to 69%, which the government says is 11.6% below what would usually be expected for this point in the year. During July alone, storage dropped by 16% - the sharpest July fall in raw storage for at least 30 years. River conditions are also worsening: only 14% of river flows are at normal levels, while 22% are exceptionally low, including the Avon, Wye, Ely Ouse and Exe.\n\n**What this means for rivers and wildlife:** warmer, shallower water carries less oxygen, so fish come under stress quickly. The Environment Agency says water temperatures have reached 28C on the River Misbourne and 27C on both the Hampshire Avon and the Trent, around 2C above what would normally be expected. That has already led to repeated fish rescues, with 38 in the West Midlands alone. Natural England has logged 245 wildfires on Sites of Special Scientific Interest this year, wetlands and peatlands are drying out, and canals are being hit too, with 26 navigation closures and 19 restrictions across the Canal & River Trust network.

Farmers are feeling this early and hard. The National Farmers’ Union says many growers have completed their earliest harvest in 20 years, with poor yields reported in key crops. Livestock farmers are already using winter feed because grass growth has stalled, and dairy farms are being warned that milk volumes may fall if the shortage of grazing and forage continues.\n\nThere is also a more technical pressure point that matters for all of us: irrigation. In East Anglia alone, 1,534 irrigation restrictions are in place. The government says 302 licensed abstractors - that is, farms or businesses allowed to take water from rivers or groundwater - are being required to cut the amount they take from rivers by 50%, and 14 abstractors in the Wensum catchment in Norfolk have had to stop altogether. **What it means:** drought is not only an environmental story. It is a food story too, because less available water can mean smaller harvests, tighter margins for farms and more pressure on the food system later in the year.

For households, the most visible sign of drought is the Temporary Use Ban, better known as a hosepipe ban. Drought status does not automatically mean a ban, but the two often appear together as pressure grows. Eight water companies - Affinity Water, Anglian Water, Cambridge Water, Essex & Suffolk Water, Southern Water, South East Water, Thames Water and South West Water - have introduced bans in some or all of their areas, affecting more than 27 million customers. The government says these restrictions have cut public demand by up to 9% in some places, which shows they do change behaviour.\n\nIt is worth being precise here. A Temporary Use Ban does not mean all garden watering becomes illegal: watering cans and buckets can still be used, and people with disabilities or health conditions can contact their water company to discuss their circumstances. **What this means for you:** if a ban applies where you live, the aim is not punishment. It is to stretch limited supplies so essential use can continue and rivers do not fall even further. But there is a fair public question alongside that message: if households are being asked to count every drop, water companies also need to show they are doing the same.

That question about fairness runs through the whole story. Water Minister Emma Hardy has told water companies to do more to cut leaks, which can worsen in hot weather as pipes shift in dry soil. That matters because people will follow restrictions more readily when they believe the system is carrying its share of the work. Asking families to let lawns turn brown is one thing; asking them to do it while they see major leakage continue is another.\n\nThe longer-term picture is even more serious. The government says England will need an extra 5 billion litres of water a day by 2055 to meet demand for public supply. Its current plans point to ten new reservoirs by 2050, with Havant Thicket already under construction, and around 700 million extra litres a day from those schemes. There is also work on water transfers, desalination, recycling, on-farm reservoirs, water-efficiency labels and better standards for new homes. England is not alone here either: mainland Europe is also struggling with heat and low water, and low levels on the Rhine and Danube are already disrupting transport and energy. Repeated droughts are a climate change story, and a planning story, and a maintenance story - not just a personal responsibility story.

So what can we do with this information, beyond worry? **What you can do now:** keep it simple and steady. A leaking toilet can waste 200 to 400 litres a day, so fixing one is one of the biggest quick wins at home. Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth, filling the washing machine properly, skipping the pre-rinse before the dishwasher, and taking shorter showers all help. Waterwise says even cutting one minute from a shower can save about 15 litres each time, and the government says a low-flow shower head can save up to 90 litres over a 10-minute shower compared with a standard fitting.\n\nIf you have a garden, water early in the morning or later in the evening, aim for the roots rather than the leaves, and use a watering can if you are in a ban area. Rain butts, mulch and reusing leftover water from bowls can all make a difference. And if you are near a river and see fish gasping at the surface or trapped in isolated pools, the Angling Trust says to report it to the Environment Agency’s incident hotline. Small actions will not solve drought on their own, and we should not pretend they will. But they can buy time, reduce pressure locally and remind us that water is not unlimited, even in a country that often likes to think of itself as wet.