With parks dried to a crisp, wildfires destroying homes and the country in the midst of its hottest summer on record, it is clear the UK is desperate for rain.
All of Wales and nearly three-quarters of England are currently in drought, with some areas of the South not seeing a drop of rain for well over a month. Millions of households are under hosepipe bans and several areas in England are facing water bans or being asked to conserve water to avoid suppliers running dry.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham chaired a Cobra meeting last week to address the extreme conditions, and said “Britain is a tinderbox” due to the heat and drought.
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
Large parts of the UK will soon see a reprieve, with rain forecast later this week. While some areas of Scotland have seen regular showers throughout the summer, for some of the driest areas, this may be their first significant rainfall in months.
Showers, heavy rain and thunderstorms this week
The sweltering temperatures seen last week will decline significantly this week, with Met Office meteorologist Tom Morgan saying: “It’s turning cooler and more changeable through the week ahead for many of us.”
Many might even see “some quite menacing skies” with dark rain clouds later in the week, he said.
Monday and Tuesday won’t see much of a difference for many areas. Morgan said that for many parts Monday “will be a largely dry day”, with “very warm conditions” lingering in some parts.
Monday evening will see “some heavy bursts of rain” across Northern Ireland, Scotland and northeast England. Overnight, the rest of England “will generally turn more showery”.
While he warned this could be fairly insignificant, he added that “some places will be quite lucky and see several millimeters of rain by the morning”.
Once again, northeast Scotland will have a particularly wet morning on Tuesday, though there is also a chance of showers in the southwest of England and the South Coast.
The real reprieve for the driest areas of the country will come later in the week. By Wednesday, Morgan said it will become “more changeable”, with “a greater chance of some heavy showers and some thunderstorms for many”.
“By Thursday some heavy downpours, potentially quite slow moving, so some longer spells of rain for some,” he added.
It will turn cooler as well, with temperatures set to drop slightly below average for the time of year.
Historic drought
The whole of Wales and 45 million people in England are now in drought. According to the Environment Agency, many areas have received less than 1mm of rainfall this month.
Despite a wetter-than-average winter, July saw just 10 per cent of average seasonal rainfall, while August has only had 6 per cent of expected rainfall to date.
Rivers are drying up, with 15 sites now classified as “exceptionally low” and five reservoirs now classed at the same critical level.
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.
In 2025, the government announced plans for nine new reservoirs across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Kent, East Sussex and the West Midlands.
But reservoirs take decades to build, and even once they are finished, they won’t solve Britain’s water problem alone, experts warned.
One heatwave a month
The UK has seen a seemingly endless series of heatwaves this summer, with temperatures peaking at 38.1°C at Kew Gardens in London on 13 August – the hottest day of the year so far.
“This current spell of extreme heat is the latest in a remarkable summer. Numerous temperature records have been broken and we’ve seen an exceptionally dry season across much of England and Wales too,” Met Office chief forecaster Neil Armstrong said.
So far, the UK has had at least one heatwave every month since May. The 37 days from 30 June to 5 August counted as the UK’s second-longest heatwave.
The Government announced on Friday it was temporarily banning the sale of disposable barbecues, blaming the single-use grills for a string of wildfires over the summer.
Shortly after the announcement, an emergency alert was sent to millions of phones warning of a “very high risk of wildfires” across England and Wales, telling people not to light disposable barbecues, firepits, garden incinerators or fireworks.
The Prime Minister told BBC : “Britain is a tinderbox right now. Setting a fire in any outdoor setting of any kind is a risk to other people’s homes, it’s a risk to other people’s lives, don’t do it, please don’t do it.”