YORKSHIRE Water has applied for a drought permit to be allowed to take more water from the River Ouse to help refill its reservoirs elsewhere.

The company's application to the Environment Agency comes despite recent rainfall and forecasters expecting a band of heavy, blustery rain to cross the region tomorrow.

It also comes a month after the company announced a hosepipe ban across Yorkshire, following a very dry summer which had left the reservoirs less than half full.

A spokesperson said today that the region had seen below-average rainfall since February, and experts were predicting that September would have had less than 65 per cent of the expected rainfall by the month's end.

They said 'patchy rainfall,' which the region had seen recently, did not have a significant impact on reservoir stocks straight away. 

"When the ground has been extremely dry, it needs rain to re-wet it before it begins to impact reservoir levels," they said.

"The River Ouse is an important part of Yorkshire Water’s water resources. The drought permit would allow the water company to increase the amount of water it takes from the River Ouse in order to support reservoir stocks and drinking water production."

Granville Davies, clean water and catchment strategy manager, said “Although we have had some intermittent rainfall, reservoir levels are still significantly below where we would expect for this time of year and are only around a third full. 

"As the ground has been incredibly dry this summer, we are going to need quite a lot of wet weather over the next few months before they return to their usual levels, so it’s really important that people keep taking steps to save water.

“We are taking further steps to look after our reservoir stocks. The hosepipe ban we introduced in August helps to reduce water use and pressure on our reservoirs, and it also allows us to apply to the Environment Agency for drought permits, which will help us protect drinking water supplies and the environment.”

The hosepipe ban introduced last month applied even to York residents, despite most of the city's water coming not from the reservoirs but from the Ouse, which never runs dry in a drought.

The company said then that York would be included in the ban because it was part of Yorkshire Water's wider water network.

It dismissed suggestions by a former York councillor that in 1999, when it took over the former York Waterworks - which until then was responsible for water supplies in the city - it agreed there would never be a hosepipe ban in the city.

It said some of York's water came from its grid network, which moved water around the region to meet demand.