At the start of 2026, a drought might have seemed unthinkable, after the UK experienced its eighth wettest winter since records began.
But just seven months later, England’s reservoirs are averaging 66 per cent full – far below the 80 per cent usually expected for this time of year, with two Somerset reservoirs, Wimbleball and Clatworthy, now less than half full.
Three-quarters of England and the whole of Wales are now in drought, with hosepipe bans affecting millions of homes.
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Eurostar rival finally gets go ahead – everything we know
Virgin will be raising prices by 3.2 per cent (Photo: Getty)
Incoming Eurostar rival Virgin Trains has been granted track access for new services between London and Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam in 2030.
It marks a step closer to ending Eurostar’s monopoly. The trainline has operated without competition for nearly 32 years.
Approval lasts for 10 years
Caption: An aerial photograph shows the Temple Mills International train depot in east London, on October 27, 2025. British entrepreneur Richard Branson vowed Thursday to “shake up” cross-Channel train services after regulators approved a key bid by his Virgin Group to share an east London depot with Eurostar. The Virgin founder said the decision by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) to grant access to the Temple Mills International site for maintaining and storing trains was “the right one for consumers”. (Photo by Yelim LEE / AFP) (Photo by YELIM LEE/AFP via Getty Images)
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The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has given approval for Sir Richard Branson’s company to run up to 20 daily services through the Channel Tunnel between October 2030 to December 2040.
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Virgin Trains in Eurostar stations
In October, Virgin Trains was told it could share Eurostar’s Temple Mills depot in east London.
Temple Mills is the only depot that can be accessed from High Speed 1 – the line that runs between London and the tunnel.
Virgin Trains plans to run services between St Pancras and the same stations in Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam used by Eurostar.
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‘Still more work to do’
This is an important next step in bringing competition and growth to the market for international rail services, and we welcome the progress Virgin Trains and London St Pancras High Speed have made. While there is still more work to do, we are supporting Virgin and the wider industry to grow international services.
Martin Jones, Deputy director of access and international
Virgins Trains East Coast failed again due to ‘wildly wrong’ forecasts (Photo: Stagecoach)
What next?
Despite just clearing a major regulatory hurdle, Virgin Trains has yet to secure access to other rail networks.
It must also obtain safety approvals from the ORR and relevant regulators in the EU before services start in 2030.
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The weather to expect for the rest of the summer
Much of England this week was placed under an amber warning for extreme heat, in the face of the fifth heatwave in a summer marked by extremely dry weather and drought (Photo: Dan Kitwood/ Getty Images)
While temperatures are expected to drop this week after the UK’s fifth heatwave brought a record 38.1°C – it appears the relief will be only temporary.
Another heatwave is expected to descend on the UK next month, the Met Office has warned, after a month of unprecedented hot and dry conditions.
A September heatwave
The Met Office has predicted that there is a chance of a late-season heatwave developing in September as the UK moves into the meteorological autumn.
The forecaster said there was “a chance that late-season hot spells or heatwaves develop” in the south between 31 August and 14 September.
Caption: (FILES) An aerial view shows the green square and parched, dry and yellow grass on the cricket field of Maidenhead & Bray CC during a game, in Bray, west of London on July 25, 2026, during the extended heatwave. Climate change has intensified a drought across Europe this summer, with extreme heat driving the exceptionally dry conditions, according to experts. (Photo by Justin TALLIS / AFP via Getty Images)
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People on the cracked and dried mud bed of Hollow Pond, where the water levels have significantly dropped, in east London (Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire)
Northern areas to see ‘more changeable conditions’
The Met Office predicts “drier, more settled weather is slightly more likely towards the south and east. Temperatures are again likely to be near to or above average overall”.
A wildfire warning in Richmond Park, London (Photo: Toby Melville/Reuters)
Caption: People look out from a viewpoint at Newlands Corner, near Guildford, southwest of London, on August 2, 2026, over dry fields, turned brown from the heat of the sun and the lack of rain. England and Wales were on course for the driest July since records began nearly 200 years ago, the Met Office said on Friday, amid a prolonged heatwave and exceptionally low rainfall. (Photo by Peter Nicholls / AFP via Getty Images)
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While the south may see more heat, there will likely be “more changeable conditions” in the north and northwest of the country as autumn begins, the Met Office said.
Rain to fall after record dry July
Looking to the weekend, BBC Weather forecasts up to a 58 per cent chance of rain on Sunday, 23 August.
The following week could also see some rain, with BBC Weather predicting showers on Thursday, 28 August and Friday, 29 August – some respite after the driest July on record across England.
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Analysis
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Caption: Palestinians run for cover as smoke and fire rise during an Israeli strike on the the Al-Muttaqin Mosque in Gaza City on July 28, 2026. Gaza remains gripped by daily violence, with both the Israeli military and Hamas accusing one another of violating the truce in effect since October 10. The war flattened swathes of the territory, displaced most of the population at least once, and left hundreds of thousands of people living in tents and temporary shelters. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP via Getty Images)
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Where does the Gaza peace deal stand?
US envoy Jared Kushner is in the Middle East today for talks with key figures, following a rare meeting with Hamas’s leader yesterday.
Last month, Donald Trump’s Board of Peace said it had reached an agreement for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
Here’s what you need to know.
Israel rejects Gaza peace plan
Hamas continues to rule over the Gaza strip and has refused calls from Board of Peace officials to disarm (Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Hamas deal
Trump said Hamas had agreed to disarm if Israel withdraws its forces from Gaza. Israel rejected the 15-point plan, which calls for Gaza to be rebuilt under a new civilian Palestinian administration.
US-brokered ceasefire
The Hamas deal breakthrough came nine months after a US-brokered ceasefire was signed, with negotiations between Israel and Hamas largely deadlocked since then.
Caption: sraeli soldiers take a break on their armoured vehicles at a position along the Israel-Gaza border fence on October 10, 2025. Gaza’s civil defence agency said on October 10 that Israeli forces have begun pulling back from parts of the territory, particularly in Gaza City and Khan Yunis. Israeli prime minister’s office said that the government had “approved the framework” of a hostage release deal with Hamas, as both sides edged closer to ending more than two years of hostilities in Gaza. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
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US envoy to meet Netanyahu
Netanyahu rejects plan
The Israeli PM said his military would not withdraw from Gaza, warning there would never be a Palestinian state in Gaza under his leadership.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed a push from the mayor of New York City to arrest him (Photo: Nathan Howard/AFP)
Caption: FILE PHOTO: Jared Kushner looks on during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 6, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura/File Photo
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US envoy in Middle East
Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner is expected to meet Netanyahu today to discuss the US-backed Gaza plan. He met with with Hamas leader Khalil al Hayya yesterday.
What happens next?
Eight Muslim countries issued a statement on Sunday condemning Israel’s rejection.
While it’s not yet clear whether Kushner’s talks will be successful, one topic at the heart of discussions will be the disarmament process.
Caption: Palestinians pass along a street surrounded by buildings destroyed during Israeli air and ground operations in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, in Gaza City, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
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Analysis
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Why average house price plunged by £7,360 in August
While a quieter market could create opportunities for buyers, for sellers it means pricing correctly and being realistic more than ever (Photo: Jason Alden/Getty)
Average house prices nosedived by more than £7,000 this month- marking the biggest August price fall since 2018, according to new figures.
Property site Rightmove said asking prices fell by 2 per cent, or £7,360 month-on-month.
Rightmove downgrades annual house price projections
While prices usually fall in August, this is a much bigger drop than the 10-year average of 1.3 per cent.
The figures prompted Rightmove to downgrade its annual house price forecast for 2026 from a 2 per cent increase to between 0 and a 2 per cent fall.
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What is influencing the figures?
The average asking price for a home in Britain stood at £364,999 in August – 1 per cent lower than a year ago.
And it’s all down to the supply.
The number of available homes for sale is at a 12-year high for this time of year.
This, combined with the quiet summer holiday period, has led to lower price expectations from sellers.
Colleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove, said the larger-than-usual price drop is a sign sellers are pricing much more competitively from the offset.
“Buyers have the widest choice of homes for sale at this time of year in more than a decade, so standing out on price for the right reasons is hugely important,” she said.
A regional divide in property prices
But not everywhere is experiencing a dampening in property prices – as usual, there is a regional divide, Rightmove said.
Some buyers are putting purchases on pause (Yui Mok/PA Wire)
One third of renters are paying 50 per cent or more of their income on their rent (Photo: Christopher Furlong/ Getty)
In the North West of England, average asking prices are up by 1.9 per cent annually, beating out homes in London where prices have sunk by 3.1 per cent on average.
Burnham ‘mini bounce’
The depressed figures follow a “mini bounce” in buyer demand since Andy Burnham became PM.
Buying activity, however, remains roughly 10 per cent below 2025 levels due to the changing picture for mortgage rates, geopolitical uncertainty and October’s Budget spooking potential buyers.
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Everything you need to know about Reform’s welfare overhaul
Reform UK is preparing to unveil the biggest shake-up of the welfare system “in a generation”, with plans to abolish personal independence payments (PIP) for working-age adults and save an estimated £50bn a year.
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‘We will not pretend this is painless’
Nearly three million people would see their disability or sickness payments withdrawn or changed under the plans.
The party’s treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals in an article for The Sunday Telegraph, ahead of a full 50-page policy paper due on Monday. He has acknowledged the human cost directly, writing: “We will not pretend this is painless.”
Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage (left) and Reform’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick (Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)
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What is Reform proposing?
Reform would scrap PIP and the health element of universal credit for working-age adults. Both would be replaced with a new “health security allowance”, a single, regularly reviewed payment.
Only claimants with “severe, enduring and high-risk” conditions would qualify for that cash support.
Everyone else currently receiving disability-related payments would lose their cash entitlement altogether.
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A closer look at the detail
Those who would lose access to payments would instead be supported through council-run disability support accounts.
An activist holds a placard during a protest over benefits cuts organised by People’s Assembly on June 7, 2025 in London, England. Activists as well as some Labour MPs have objected to the government’s proposed benefits cuts, including tightened criteria for personal independence payments (Pip) for people with disabilities. (Photo by Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images)
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The Government faced backlash for proposing to cut personal independence payments last summer (Photo: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Reform estimates that 2.16 million would keep their present cash entitlement in full, while 2.89 million would see theirs modified or withdrawn.
Child payments impacted
This week, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have both strongly hinted they will lift the two-child benefit limit (Photo: Danny Lawson/PA)
The party plans to extend the same approach to children’s benefits, aligning the system for anxiety, depression and ADHD with the adult changes, though only for new claimants.
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Plans modelled on Dutch system
Reform would also place a new obligation on businesses with more than five staff to take out “return to work cover” insurance, which would pay for the cost of an employee’s first two years off sick, rather than the state covering that cost through benefits.
The scheme is modelled on the Dutch system, where Reform argues disability benefit applications fell by 40 per cent after similar reforms were introduced.
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Experts say the world is at a key cross-roads in malaria control and eradication (Photo: James Gathany/CDC via AP)
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Scientists hail malaria breakthrough – what we know
A new compound has been hailed “an exciting step forward” in the fight against malaria – which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.
Researchers at the University of Dundee, who discovered the compound, say it has the potential to simplify dosing regimens for the treatment and prevention of the illness.
A ‘novel drug-like molecule’
The new compound, called cabamiquine, is described as a “novel drug-like molecule” that can be delivered in a single dose.
The advances in a vaccine against malaria was one of 2023’s most promising breakthroughs (Photo: Getty Images)
The world should learn the lessons of Covid to fast-track vaccines for deadly diseases like malaria, according to Professor Adrian Hill (Photo: AFP)
An early-stage clinical trial showed that when administered with a commonly used antimalarial drug called pyronaridine, it is both effective and has a favourable safety profile in adults and adolescents.
Larger trials on the horizon
The team said the findings support the development of the combination therapy for larger trials and children.
In 2024, there were an estimated 282 million cases of malaria and 610,000 deaths from the disease worldwide. Figures have been rising in part due to resistance to common malaria medicines.
Caption: FILE PHOTO: A doctor tests a child for malaria at the Ithani-Asheri Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania, May 11, 2016. REUTERS/Katy Migiro/File Photo
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Recurring malaria is the most common type of malaria outside Sub-Saharan Africa. (NABILA EL HADAD/AFP/Getty Images)
An ‘exciting step forward’
This is an exciting step forward for a compound which has great potential to simplify dosing regimens for malaria, a disease which causes hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. We are delighted to see how the compound… is progressing into a potential malaria medicine.
Dr Beatriz Baragana, a member of the Dundee University team that discovered cabamiquine
Amina Dawd, 36, strokes one of her resting children’s hair as two of her other children sleep under the protective bednets. The children sleeping without the net will still gain some protection from the repellant properties of the bednet. The Long Lasting Insecticide Nets (LLIN) help to repell bugs and prevent malaria, the country’s biggest killer disease. (Photo by Louise Gubb/Corbis via Getty Images)
Professor Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist at the University of Reading, said the UK’s water network “does not build years of storage into the system, so one wet winter does not guarantee healthy reservoir levels through a dry year”.
This winter’s rain did top up supplies, she said, but “an exceptionally dry and hot spring and summer” drained them again just as fast.
The government knows this is a problem. In 2025, it promised nine new reservoirs to boost the country’s water storage.
None of them has been built yet – and Cloke says part of the problem is simple “inertia”, with Britain continuing “as normal” even as the climate changes around it.
The plans for new reservoirs
The nine reservoirs are planned across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Kent, East Sussex and the West Midlands.
Some are further along than others. The White Horse reservoir, near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Fens reservoir, near Cambridge, are the most advanced, though both remain in the planning and design stage, with White Horse expected to be completed by 2040 and the Fens by 2036.
Costs for White Horse have already climbed sharply – estimates for construction have more than tripled since the project began, and it could now cost bill-payers up to £7.5bn.
Others are much earlier in the process. Mendip Quarries in Somerset cannot begin construction until quarrying ends in 2040. River Adur in Sussex doesn’t even have a confirmed site.
The one reservoir actually under construction right now isn’t part of the nine. Havant Thicket, near Portsmouth, was already under way before the government’s 2025 pledge, and is due to open in 2031 – the first new major reservoir to open in England in more than 30 years, since Carsington Water in Derbyshire.
Why does it take so long to build one?
Building a reservoir is a major undertaking, and it can take anywhere between 15 and 25 years from the first proposal to the taps actually turning on. Four separate hurdles stand in the way.
The first is finding a location. Reservoirs need a lot of space – often several square kilometres – and the right type of soil nearby to supply construction material.
As Terry Fuller, chairman of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ National Reservoir Infrastructure Forum, put it, these sites “don’t grow on trees”.
Getting planning permission is its own hurdle, and one that can take years to clear. One thing that can complicate this stage, according to Fuller, is that the planning authorities at local councils are “famously under-resourced” and often have limited experience when it comes to approving reservoirs.
“It’s a very specialist thing compared to, say, a house extension, for example,” he said.
The government has tried to bypass some of this for its three most advanced projects – White Horse, the Fens and South Lincs – by automatically classing them as “nationally significant infrastructure”, which hands the final planning decision to the government. However, the other six new reservoirs don’t have this status.
Much of England last week was placed under an amber warning for extreme heat, in the face of the fifth heatwave (Photo: Jonathan Brady/PA)
Then there’s geography. Much of the South and East of England – where water demand is highest, but rainfall is lowest – is also some of the hardest places to build a reservoir.
Traditionally, reservoirs were built by damming a valley, flooding it to create a lake held in place by walls at one end. That works well in hilly areas like Wales, the Pennines and the Lake District, but most of those sites are already in use.
The South and East of England, by contrast, is largely flat, with no valleys left to dam. Instead, something closer to an artificial lake has to be built, with a ring of embankments made from specialist clay enclosing it on all sides – a significantly more costly endeavour.
The final challenge is filling the reservoir. Rain alone isn’t enough, and many new sites also have no single large river to draw from, relying instead on pumping in surplus water from smaller sources during winter.
The Fens reservoir shows how this issue can derail a project. Its progress through planning was delayed after regulators said developers had not resolved how they would fill it, since the site relies on a mix of smaller rivers and a man-made drainage network rather than one clear source.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the Government was “securing water supplies for the future” with £104bn of private investment to fix leaks, build the nine reservoirs and secure supplies, and was “streamlining the planning process” by fast-tracking projects as “nationally significant”.
Why reservoirs might not be enough
Even if all nine reservoirs are built, they won’t solve Britain’s water problem on their own.
The Environment Agency estimates that England alone will need five billion extra litres of water a day by 2055 – far off the 700 million litres the nine new reservoirs are set to deliver.
Much of that pressure is likely to come from Labour’s pledge to build 1.5 million new homes before the next general election, due in 2029.
Dr Megan Klaar, a water scientist at the University of Leeds, said housebuilding “is going to put huge stress” on regions “where they’re already having water restrictions”, like Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire.
Klaar, and every other expert The i Paper spoke to, agreed that the UK needed to look at other options to ensure water security in the future.
Dr Kevin Grecksch, a water governance expert at the University of Oxford, said water reuse – treating wastewater so it can be used again rather than drawn fresh – was one of “the hottest topics” in academic water management right now.
“Why are we using fresh water to put on our potatoes or on our wheat?” he said, pointing out that around 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water is used for agriculture. “It’s perfectly fine – many countries across the world are already using [treated water on plants].”
He said the technology already exists to treat wastewater to drinking standard if needed – something several EU countries already require by law, and the UK could also look at adopting.
Another option is desalination – removing salt from seawater to make it drinkable – but experts were far less enthusiastic about it. Grecksch compared it to nuclear power in the energy sector: “It all sounds very good on paper, but it comes with some problems.”
It’s highly energy-intensive, he said, leaves behind a “toxic brine” by-product, and costs roughly 10 times more than treating river or reservoir water.
The Environment Agency estimates that England alone will need five billion extra litres of water a day by 2055 (Photo: Joe Giddens/PA)
Use less, waste less
Another option is simply encouraging people to use less water. Klaar said new-build homes should be required to include water-saving devices and water butts – which collect rainwater for gardening – as standard, arguing house builders “aren’t really going to do it on their own volition” without a change in the rules.
She also said water metering – charging households based on how much water they actually use, rather than a fixed rate – could help, since it “makes you realise how much water you’re using” – though she admitted it “wouldn’t be popular.”
But there’s an even “bigger prize” for saving water, according to Cloke – fixing the leaks to tackle the 2.9 billion litres of water lost this way daily. The i Paper revealed last month that water companies were losing far more to leaks than the hosepipe bans they implemented were saving.
Ultimately, most experts agree the biggest risk isn’t any single missing reservoir or unfixed leak, but the danger of standing still.
As Grecksch put it, what’s needed most is “an honest and serious discussion and conversation about the future of our water resources” – something he said has so far been missing amid “a lot of fragmented planning”.