ngland is enduring its fifth heatwave of the summer, with almost three-quarters of the country now in drought but for many readers, the real story isn’t the weather – it’s what’s happening underground.

As hosepipe bans spread to 27 million households, readers have been sharing their own run-ins with the water companies now asking them to cut back: mains leaks left unfixed for years, reservoirs drained while dividends flow abroad, and infrastructure that hasn’t kept pace with the climate crisis.

Others pointed out that Portugal and France, both hotter and drier this summer, have avoided restrictions altogether by investing in dams and hydro power years ago.

Here’s what you had to say:

Water companies have under-invested for decades. Billions have gone abroad in dividends over that time. Still paying out million-pound salaries. We face drought being a more and more common thing with no end to leaks in sight. No major incentives for grey water usage. Swimming pools, golf courses and washing cars are not priorities compared to having water to flush loos, not having water to cook with and to drink.

Where I live we have had a hosepipe ban for a while now. Today we are officially experiencing a drought. Just outside my house is a water leak that has been reported to the water company at least twice. A symptom of a problem that has been ongoing for at least two years, they “mended” one side of the road, only for it to emerge on the other. It hasn’t flooded the road as all the water runs off into the adjacent canal. It’s shocking that this privatised business makes me restrict my water usage while leaving this leak to waste water, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, week after week!

I have not mowed my lawns since the 10th of June – normally I’d have cut the grass seven or eight times in the last 60 days. Of 3,000 square metres of grass, only about 20 square metres isn’t dead, and that’s just because it’s shaded by a large tree. There is no living grass anywhere within a two–hour drive of me. I’ve spent my holidays here since 1990 and lived here since 2016 – I’ve never seen a drought like this. The river near here normally makes the Thames look like a brook, but in places I think I could wade across it. Trying to grow onions has been a sick joke; my tomato plants dropped three trusses’ worth of flowers when the temperature didn’t dip below 36C for 14 days running.

Only private pools should be banned, not public pools, which often recycle water by sending it through large filtration plants, often under the pool with the addition of chemicals. Private pools don’t usually have such large plant rooms. Public pools not only help people cool off (summer temperature of the water is usually 20C), but are safer than swimming in a quarry where the water is much colder, making it dangerous, and unsupervised.

Here in Portugal while the UK was doing nothing they were creating dam after dam to save water and generate hydro. Over 30C for weeks and weeks with zero rain and no water bans. In addition all new data centres have to generate their own electricity and cannot go anywhere near using drinking water. Just showing the contrast between a normal country and the basket case that is the UK.

It is far hotter here in France; no outright bans, other than any kind of fire. The municipal pool is open. I don’t know about golf courses, but the cows have not been brought down to the field near us this year, for the first time in 30 years.

Same story in France. Today’s Figaro carries a stark warning from farmers of a “huge moral and physical exhaustion” as heatwaves hit market gardening, livestock and viticulture across the country. Agroclimatologist Serge Zaka is quoted as saying this may be one of the largest agricultural disasters in France since 1945.

It will dawn on people soon that data centres don’t fill fields with crops – the food in a tin in Tesco had to be grown somewhere first. England is in an emergency situation: the fields are burnt dry, and in a month’s time it will rain and they’ll flood. All that water will simply drain away, leaving carnage and empty reservoirs behind it. This will happen again next year, and the years after that. If you’re ever going to act on privatised English water, you’d better do it sooner rather than later.

Everyone must stop watering your tomatoes. No filling paddling pools. Don’t have baths, have showers because there’s a drought and we must all save water. But there’s no water shortage when it comes to commercial car washes which go through up to 16,000 litres of water per day! Drought for us but not for them.

Maybe this will finally stir officials and MPs into getting large water tanks fitted to houses and businesses, so people can use their own reclaimed roof water instead of relying on new reservoirs. Tanks are available up to at least 30,000 litres, though smaller ones might suit most homes. Don’t scalp your lawn either – mow it on a higher setting and it’ll stay green, and shrubs and insect–friendly flowers will harvest their own water from overnight dew. The BBC showed grass turning brown on scalped cricket pitches today – mine’s fine.

Thatcher’s privatisation experiment has failed everyone except the investors. We have droughts, leaking pipes, inadequate reservoirs and raw sewage being discharged into our rivers and seas, while private companies extract profits from essential services. It’s time to stop treating water and other essential public services as profit–making businesses and bring them back into public ownership.

Our water supply infrastructure is a sad story. At the very least, perhaps we’ll see pressure to upgrade old pipes faster and speed up the deployment of additional reservoirs at the higher level to ensure adequate supply of drinking water. It should also make us think of how to make better use of rain water at home, and recycling of used water.

Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.

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