Green lawns don't mean a thing – you could be using your bath water, have your own bore-hole or maybe just have an astroturf lawn. It's more likely to be sniffy neighbours reporting someone.

Incidentally, according to Hozelock you can still use a hose for 'Water Play'. Just play on the lawn, kids.

on the "how do they know" – i think they rely on people snitching and water company vans driving about.

So where do I stand with my drip type watering system plumbed into our hanging baskets?

It runs on an automatic timer system for 15 minutes in the morning & the same in the evening, its on a regulator to give 1 bar as full mains pressure floods them.

Liverpool Echo article

Apparently the Lakes ressies are low, so Manchester will be in drought, so united utilities are alledgedly using North Wales ressies (usually supply merseyside etc) for Manchester as well, meaning drought for the north west in general.

Note the following from the article….

The company is investing £200m over the next five years on improving its pipe network and industry regulator OFWAT said UU did beat its leakage target by 5m litres a day and was ranked as one of the best performing companies in the UK.

UU has the largest area to serve in the UK of all the water companies. They have a lot more pipework to maintain and don't forget, it's a very rare thing for us to need a hosepipe ban, we're usually very lucky in the North West in that we have so much water we can usually sell some to the southerners. Leaks aren't a problem when your reservoirs are brimming over.