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The hosepipe ban in London is set to last until “towards the end of the year,” says a Thames Water executive.
Many Londoners would expect the ban to be lifted within weeks as rain starts to fall on the capital.
But Nevil Muncaster, strategic water resources director at Thames Water, told how supplies had been depleted in the recent heatwaves where temperatures have risen as high as 38C in London.
He said there had been a “huge demand on top of our normal supplies”.
Pressed on how long the ban would last, Mr Muncaster told Times Radio: “Clearly, it's still dry.
“The Environment Agency forecast is that it will be drier than normal for the next few months, but we'll wait and see.
“But at the same time, we'll make sure what we're going to do is protect the environment, make sure we see our groundwater and river flows.”
Asked if this meant a ban for weeks or a couple of months, he added: “Realistically, it's going to be towards the end of the year before that comes off.”
Thames Water is urging customers to continue to reduce water usage as it said household demand has fallen by 3% across London and more than 6% across the Thames Valley and home counties since it introduced a hosepipe ban on July 23.
The debt-laden utlity firm said London reservoir storage was at 74%, which is lower than the firm would expect for this time of year but the Farmoor Reservoir in Oxfordshire was 92% full.
Rainfall in the Thames catchment area during July was less than 1mm, just 2% of the long-term average, it added, while customers used about 100 million litres more water every day than normal, putting more pressure on rivers, reservoirs and the water network.
However, Thames Water has faced criticism over the level of leakages which are seeing supplies lost.
Thames Water starr handing out bottled water to residents at Roding Sports Centre in Chigwell, Essex, following a water main burst on Chigwell Road in South WoodfordPAEarlier this week, customers were urged to only use water for “essential” purposes after thousands of Kent homes were hit by supply issues.
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South East Water warned its customers in the county that water levels in its drinking storage tanks remain “critically low”.
Supply had been restored to 7,400 properties in Herne Bay, Rough Common and Blean by Tuesday.
A hosepipe ban began for all of Wessex Water’s 1.4 million customers across areas in Bath, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire on Tuesday.
It is the first ban the company has put in place for 50 years, since the summer of 1976.
More than 27 million people across England have had hosepipe use restricted in their area after months of hot and dry weather.
The cooler and wetter conditions now come after the UK’s fifth heatwave of the summer, during which the hottest day of the year was recorded in Kew Gardens, London, when temperature reached 38.1C.
Forecasts say another heatwave may be coming in September in London.
Britain will see showers over the coming days but the rain is “not going to solve the drought situation overnight”, a forecaster has said.
Some areas in the country will have the “first meaningful rain for a long time” this week, the Met Office explained, after a summer of heatwaves and dry weather have left many areas with parched land and facing water shortages.
However, the weather experts said the rainfall would not be a “huge amount” and “highly hit and miss from place to place”, before conditions became drier again over the weekend.
Met Office meteorologist Aidan McGivern said: “I suspect many people across England and Wales will at least enjoy the feel of some rain falling out of the sky during the next few days.
“But it’s not going to solve the drought situation overnight because we’re not expecting huge amounts and it will be highly variable because a lot of it will come in the form of showers.”