‘You can see the water going down’: residents on edge as one of England’s worst-hit reservoirs dries up

After UK’s hottest summer on record, Ardingly near Haywards Heath is just 19% full – and next-closest reservoir is unusable due to broken treatment works

“You can see the water level at Ardingly going down and down. I don’t remember ever seeing it this low,” says Caroline Allan, a lifetime resident of Haywards Heath, the nearest town to one of England’s most depleted reservoirs.

The Ardingly reservoir, managed by South East Water and serving about 95,000 properties in and around Haywards Heath and Uckfield in Sussex, is currently 19% full.

The day the Guardian visited, the weather was grey and rainy, incongruous with the muddy reservoir bed that should have been submerged under six metres of water.