Kent is in drought and the Darent is near its record low. Which hosepipe ban covers your street, what it bans, what is exempt and the £1,000 fine.

Kent remains in drought, and the River Darent is running at some of the lowest August flows the Environment Agency has recorded on it. The agency’s weekly assessment, published today, keeps “Kent and South London” on drought status with no change over the past week. (Environment Agency, Dry weather and drought in England: 14 to 20 August 2026)

South East England got 3mm of rain in the week to 20 August. For August so far the region has had 5 per cent of its long-term average rainfall.

Most households in the Sevenoaks district have been under a hosepipe ban since early July. Which ban, and therefore which rules, depends on who sends your water bill.

Three water companies, three different answers

The district is not served by a single water company, and each has taken a different position:

  • South East Water supplies most of the district. Its Kent hosepipe ban came into force at 00:01 on Friday 3 July 2026 and is still running. (South East Water, hosepipe restrictions in all areas)
  • Thames Water has a ban across its whole supply area, in force from 00:01 BST on Thursday 23 July 2026 and continuing “until further notice”. (Thames Water, temporary hosepipe ban legal notice)
  • SES Water, whose area reaches east as far as Edenbridge, has no ban at all. Its customer notice reads: “SES Water are not planning to introduce a hosepipe ban at this stage, we continue to monitor the situation closely and will ensure that any changes be communicated to customers.” (SES Water)

So a household near Edenbridge may lawfully use a hosepipe while a neighbouring village cannot. The dividing line follows the water network, not the parish boundary, so the only reliable way to know is to check your own postcode. Both banning companies publish a checker:

There is a local twist. SES Water draws 15 per cent of its water from Bough Beech reservoir, which sits inside the Sevenoaks district near Edenbridge, and supplies 750,000 people across parts of Surrey, Kent and south London. (SES Water, About us)

What the ban actually stops you doing

South East Water’s ban is a statutory notice made under sections 76 and 76A-C of the Water Industry Act 1991. It prohibits eleven uses of treated mains water:

  • watering a garden using a hosepipe
  • cleaning a private motor vehicle, or a trailer, using a hosepipe
  • watering plants on domestic or other non-commercial premises using a hosepipe
  • cleaning a private leisure boat using a hosepipe
  • filling or maintaining a domestic swimming or paddling pool
  • drawing water by hosepipe for domestic recreational use, such as hot tubs
  • filling or maintaining a domestic pond, manmade or natural, using a hosepipe
  • filling or maintaining an ornamental fountain, including by permanent plumbing
  • cleaning the walls or windows of domestic premises using a hosepipe
  • cleaning paths or patios using a hosepipe
  • cleaning other artificial outdoor surfaces using a hosepipe

(South East Water, statutory notice for temporary use ban)

“Hosepipe” is defined widely. The notice covers “anything designed, adapted or used to serve the same purpose as a hosepipe”, which takes in garden sprinklers, irrigation systems and anything attached to them, including pressure washers.

Watering cans and buckets are not affected. Neither is a hosepipe fed from a water butt or another recycled water store.

The penalty is real but rarely used. Under section 76(5) of the Act, breaking the ban is a criminal offence carrying a fine of up to £1,000 on conviction in a magistrates’ court. South East Water’s own enforcement policy says it will normally offer advice first, and that prosecution is reserved for some cases. (South East Water, temporary use ban enforcement policy)

Who is exempt

South East Water applies two categories of exemption. Customers on its Priority Services Register who cannot reasonably adapt are exempted automatically and told directly. A second group of uses is pre-approved and needs no application:

  • health and safety, including preventing risk to human or animal health
  • animal welfare, including fish
  • water drawn from a water butt or other recycled store
  • newly laid lawns and new swimming pools
  • drip or trickle irrigation with a pressure reducing valve and a timer, not handheld
  • commercial watering, business need and religious practice

Sports pitches are a partial exemption. A hosepipe may be used on the playing surface itself, not the wider grounds, and only outside the peak hours of 8am to 10am and 5pm to 9pm.

Allotments are treated as gardens where they are used non-commercially, so they are covered by the ban. Land used commercially to grow crops, fruit, vegetables or plants for sale is not. Plants in outdoor pots, or in the ground under cover in a greenhouse or outbuilding, also fall outside the definition of a garden.

Thames Water’s notice lists a longer set of 23 exemptions on similar lines, with the same £1,000 maximum fine.

What the district’s own river shows

The clearest local measure of how dry this summer has been is the River Darent, the chalk stream that runs from Westerham through Otford and Shoreham to the Thames. The Environment Agency gauges it at several points, and publishes the daily figures as open data. We analysed them.

Column chart of mean daily flow in the River Darent at Lullingstone for 1 to 19 August each year from 1969 to 2026, showing 2026 among the lowest years on record and 1976 as the lowest
Chart by Sevenoaks Online. Source: Environment Agency hydrology data, Open Government Licence.
  • At Lullingstone, the Darent averaged 0.162 cubic metres a second over 1 to 19 August this year. That is the seventh lowest reading for those dates in a record going back to 1969. Only 1976, 1990, 1973, 2022, 1989 and 1996 were drier.
  • At Westerham, near the head of the river, the same period averaged 0.020 cubic metres a second, the lowest for those dates in a record that starts in 1995. The previous low was 0.026 in 2019.
  • At Otford, where the record does not yet extend past early August, July’s mean flow of 0.179 was the fourth lowest July since 2000.

Two cautions on those numbers. The Environment Agency marks 2026 readings as “unchecked”, meaning they are provisional and may be revised. And a chalk stream in a dry summer is not the same as a river in flood risk terms; the Darent has run low before, most severely in the 1970s and again in 2022.

Nationally the picture is worse than it looks locally. Reservoir storage for England stood at 62.6 per cent on 18 August, down 3.4 percentage points in a week and 16.3 percentage points below average for the time of year. Around 71 per cent of England by land is in drought and roughly 29 million people now face water restrictions.

What it means for you

If you live in the Sevenoaks district, assume a hosepipe ban applies unless you have checked and found otherwise. The practical steps:

  1. Check who supplies your drinking water by postcode, using the links above. Your sewerage company may be a different company entirely, so the name on your wastewater bill is not the answer.
  2. Use a can or a bucket for the garden. Neither is restricted by any of the bans.
  3. Apply for an exemption if you are on a Priority Services Register or one of the pre-approved activities applies. South East Water asks customers to add the activity to their account rather than assume.
  4. Do not expect an end date. South East Water says the ban will run until demand falls, resources recover and there is no further supply risk, and that it keeps the position under constant review.

The Darent is also the subject of a longer local argument. Sevenoaks Town Council said in July it had donated to a project looking at solutions for the river, and has been lobbying for stronger protections. (Sevenoaks Town Council, Sevenoaks Town Council lobbies for River Darent protections)

The riverside stretches remain open to walk, and several of them appear in our guide to family walks near Sevenoaks. If you are planting this autumn, our roundup of garden centres near Sevenoaks may be useful, though watering in new plants by hosepipe is one of the restricted activities unless a professional landscaper did the planting.

Sources

Image: The River Darent at Otford, photo by Trevor Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph Britain and Ireland.