Thames Water has admitted it must improve its performance as it prepares to impose a hosepipe ban in the "next couple of weeks".

The ban, which will affect 15m customers across London and the south of England, comes amid record temperatures and low rainfall.

While reservoirs dry up the company loses 600m litres of water a day in leaks, mainly due to ageing pipes.

Thames Water said it was fixing more than 1,100 leaks every week.

Cathryn Ross, Strategy and Regulatory Affairs Director at Thames Water said: "In all probability we'll be moving to introduce the hosepipe ban in the next couple of weeks."

According to the BBC, Thames Water has the worst record on leaks out of all nine water companies in the UK.

Ms Ross said leaks were "endemic" across the network of 20,000 miles of pipes.

"We totally accept we need to do better on fixing leaks, that's why we're fixing more than 1,100 leaks every week. We are not where we need to be, we have a lot of work to do to fix Thames Water."

Ms Ross said with the changing climate the company was looking at ways of becoming more water efficient.

"We use 150l of water per person per day in England. In Germany it's 120, in Copenhagen where they've had a big push on this it's down to nearly 100, there's loads more we can do.

"We need more storage, we also need to look at the pipes to transfer the water from where it is to where it's needed, so it's a multi-pronged approach."

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