End the golf course hosepipe-ban exemption

Changing hosepipe-ban exemption rules under the Water Industry Act 1991 (Section 76) via ministerial order/statutory instruments to end the automatic exemption for golf course playing areas (tees and greens) across England and Wales will save a huge amount of water: golf clubs should publish transparent water-use data and use only non‑potable water sources during declared droughts (except where strictly necessary for health and safety).

One golf course can use as much water in a day as around 1,800 households. 

England and Wales has over 2,000 registered golf courses, and roughly 60–65% of them rely on mains water for irrigation – that’s treated drinking water, not recycled or abstracted.

A typical 18-hole course irrigating just greens and tees uses about 4,000–5,000 cubic metres a year (4–5 million litres). When you add fairways, that's 15,000–50,000 cubic metres per course annually (15–50 million litres). One widely cited estimate puts water use at around 16 billion litres annually for England alone. That’s enough to meet the daily household needs of well over 100 million people – in a country where millions are struggling to keep gardens and allotments alive with watering cans, crops are failing and parks are scorched. Although the law allows sports turfs to be watered for health and safety reasons on active playing areas only during Temporary Use Bans, most golf clubs actually continue to water greens and tees routinely, as evidenced by satellite photographs published by national media this summer.

Well over half of the golf clubs in England and Wales are in areas classified as under official water stress. These are the regions where hosepipe bans hit hardest. They also usually grow the thirstiest grass species on both greens and fairways – fine turf grasses like creeping bentgrass and Poa annua on greens, and perennial ryegrass on fairways. 

This petition isn’t about attacking golf. It’s about fairness and facing the future realistically. Exemptions from hosepipe bans were last codified sixteen years ago. In a climate crisis, everyone should share the burden – especially when all the scientific evidence suggests we’ll face ever more over-heated summers and weather uncertainty.