Even in those nostalgia long summers you refer to there were no hosepipe bans. Now they are using perpetual rain to stop people using them.
There were no hosepipe bans because we had enough reservoirs for the population then. We now have a greatly increased population, but, in the last 30 years, we have only built 1 new large reservoir, in Derbyshire.
You can trace this decision back to an EU directive which requires all countries to operate a 'water saving' policy. Our governments now push the idea of 'Demand Management' using water meters, which is planned to lower our water consumption by around 20% per head (See 'Water Futures (2008) policy document). If this were to occur, no new reservoirs would be needed. The 20% lowered figure seems to be already in the planning predictions.
The result of this is that planned reservoirs are halted by government inspectors applying the new planning predictions. We have had an 11% increase in population in the SE since 2000, and water companies have proposed 5 new reservoirs, and extensions to 3 more, to cope with this. See their 2004 plans. ALL these reservoir works have been halted, not by the water companies, but by government intervention at the planning stage.
And no one seems to be complaining about this....