Reform UK has pledged to scrap hosepipe bans and build more reservoirs for tackling water shortages if it entered Government.
Climate change is making Britain’s summers drier, leaving politicians scrambling to ensure parts of the country don’t run out of water. Over 27 million people in England and Wales are living under temporary use bans as parts of Britain go more than two months without significant rainfall.
The Government’s current strategy involves boosting supply through a series of reservoir-building projects, reducing leakage and cutting the public’s water usage by 20 per cent by 2038.
Reform claims it can shore up water supply without reducing consumption and says there would be no need for hosepipe bans if the party was in charge.
But many of its proposals would face high costs and take many years to become reality, leaving it unclear who would shoulder the bill and how the party could ensure supply keeps up with demand.
Eurostar rival finally gets go ahead – everything we know
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
- 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.
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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 and London St Pancras High Speed have made. While there is still more work to do, we are supporting and the wider industry to grow international services.
Martin Jones, Deputy director of access and international
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
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.
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”.
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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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 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.
The Hamas deal breakthrough came nine months after a US-brokered ceasefire was signed, with negotiations between Israel and Hamas largely deadlocked since then.
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.
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.
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Why average house price plunged by £7,360 in August
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.
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.
- 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 , 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.”
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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.
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
- 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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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.
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.
An ‘exciting step forward’
This is an exciting step forward for a compound which has great potential to simplify dosing regimens for , a disease which causes hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. We are delighted to see how the compound… is progressing into a potential medicine.
Dr Beatriz Baragana, a member of the Dundee University team that discovered cabamiquine
1. No water reduction targets
The Government’s current target is to reduce per capita water consumption by 20 per cent by 2038.
It plans to do this in part by rolling out smart metering and ensuring new homes are built to better water efficiency standards. A public awareness campaign was recently launched to encourage people to use less water, including by taking shorter showers.
Reform said it would scrap these targets, telling that Britain is “an island blessed with abundant rainfall”.
On X, Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said Britain had hosepipe bans “because we’ve been governed by fools”, claiming that countries like Singapore and Saudi Arabia have no water-supply issues despite having fewer natural water resources.
But while Singapore and Saudi Arabia do not implement emergency hosepipe bans like in Europe both have strategies to reduce individual consumption and restrictions on the use of drinking water.
Singapore has a target to reduce national consumption to 130 litres per capita per day by 2030 (compared to the UK’s 2038 target of 122 litres per day). The city state is charging higher rates to households that use more water and rolling out smart shower devices in public housing.
Saudi Arabia has a target to reduce per capita consumption by 43 per cent to 150 litres per day by 2030. It has just approved strict fines for individuals and businesses that waste drinking water, like failing to install efficient fixings or using a standard hose to wash a car.
While experts are sceptical that Britain will meet its future water needs through the Government’s current efforts to reduce use, the vast majority are in agreement that individuals will need to use less water as we respond to our changing climate.
It’s unclear how Reform would ensure water demand doesn’t outstrip supply if it abolishes hosepipe bans and removes consumption targets.
2. Build more reservoirs
Reform argued that Britain can build its way out of the current supply challenges and pledged to unleash a programme of reservoir building if in Government. While reservoirs are undoubtedly an important way to boost Britain’s water supply, building them is costly and time-consuming.
Labour has plans to build nine new reservoirs which, when completed, will be the first large-scale reservoirs built in England since 1992.
Reform said it will build more reservoirs by deeming any project that holds over 10 million cubic metres of water a “nationally significant infrastructure” project, meaning it won’t face the same planning constraints. The Labour Government already used this classification for three of the nine planned reservoirs.
Planning is certainly an issue getting in the way of reservoir projects, as many have faced fierce opposition from locals and environmentalists. But Reform’s plan doesn’t mention how it would solve the high costs associated with reservoir-building or who would pay for them.
Most of the areas facing water supply issues are in the south, where there are no upland valleys that can be more easily converted into reservoirs.
Reservoirs on flat terrain require massive engineered walls, which are expensive to build. The cost of Thames Water‘s planned reservoir in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, has risen to £7.5bn since the project started and customers will pay it through their bills.
Reservoirs also take over a decade to build, meaning they are not a quick fix.
3. Desalination plants
Reform also said it will oversee the building of more desalination plants, which convert seawater into drinking water.
Mainland Britain currently has one desalination plant, in Beckton, East London. It has operated only a handful of times because of chronic technical failures.
Desalination plants are more common in arid countries, particularly in the Middle East – around half of Saudi Arabia’s water comes from desalination, for example.
Experts largely agree desalination should become part of the mix as the UK adapts to its changing climate. Anglian Water and South West Water are among those planning new desalination plants within their region.
But desalination has two main downsides: high costs and energy use. Thames Water’s plant has cost over £500m to build and maintain, despite having only been run five times. The plants also have a high environmental cost due to the use of chemicals.
Like reservoirs, desalination projects are currently funded through customer bills. Reform has not said how it plans to fund new water infrastructure, but it’s likely to need either billpayer or taxpayer funds.
As is always the case with large engineering projects, it’s up to the Government to decide whether costly infrastructure warrants the use of public funds, be it in the form of bills or taxes.
Experts broadly agree on the need to build reservoirs and desalination plants. But if a reduction in water usage doesn’t come as well, it means the Government will have to build and spend more to keep up – and is this a cost that the public are willing to shoulder?
Reform was approached for comment.