SOUTH West Water officials are to be challenged by local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger on their long-term plans for securing supplies to the region.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said he would be looking for ‘honest and straight answers’ when he sits down with them at a forthcoming meeting.

The company is extending its hosepipe ban to most of Devon in an effort to conserve stocks ahead of the usual summer surge in demand.

Officials said water levels in Devon and Cornwall remained under immense pressure despite recent rain with reservoir levels around 17 per cent lower than they were at this time last year.

Recent rainfall added less than one per cent to reservoir stocks, with the additional problem that from this point in the year much more rainfall will be absorbed by vegetation before it can percolate through to aquifers or run off into reservoirs.

Mr Liddell-Grainger, whose constituency covers West Somerset and much of Exmoor, said the situation for the region was ‘grim’.

He said: “To be stepping up restrictions at this point in the year is very bad news indeed.

“But like all the water companies, South West has just been sticking its head in the sand and hoping for the best - and suddenly the best is not going to happen.

“It has a woeful record of making provision for the future despite all the clear warnings going back well over 30 years that water supplies would be one of the major concerns as climate change took hold.

“Since the last significant reservoir investment, thousands of new homes have been built in the region to add further demand to that caused by the arrival of millions of summer tourists, and now it is becoming clear that the currently available water supplies cannot cope.

“At least South West Water has asked me for a meeting. My attempts to contact them in the past have been ignored.

“I want to know what plans there are to make the supply of water in this part of the country more resilient.

“I will also be directing the company’s attention to what is happening over on the Continent, where rivers have dried up, villages are already running out of drinking water, fruit growers are having their supplies rationed to a few hours a week, and groundwater sources have virtually disappeared.

“That is a situation which will confront us sooner or later, quite possibly sooner than it will take to build new reservoirs.

“South West Water will need to come up with some credible responses. They will find I am not the sort of MP who can be fobbed off.”

The giant Wimbleball Lake, on Exmoor, the third largest reservoir in the water company’s area, fell to a record low of just 17 per cent of its 21,320 million litre capacity during last year’s drought, but recovered quickly over the winter and by January was again 100 per cent full.