The £5.7bn White Horse Reservoir shortlist, a £7.87m fine for South West Water, Thames Water's latest funding request, Ofwat's proposed redress from Albion Water and an engineering award for Welsh Water's Llyn Celyn spillway.
1 October 2026. Thames Water has invited three joint ventures to tender to become Main Works Contractor for White Horse Reservoir near Abingdon, Oxfordshire. The contractor will design, build, test and commission the reservoir. Once built, it would be the UK's second-largest reservoir, supplying 15 million people across the South East, including Thames Water, Affinity Water and Southern Water customers.
Bids are due in spring 2027, with award expected in autumn 2027 and Ofwat overseeing the process. Construction is expected to take around a decade, with two winters to fill and water available from 2040. The project will use the Thames Tideway Tunnel funding model, with an independent Infrastructure Provider due to be appointed in 2029. Thames Water says the build will create more than 1,000 jobs. Applicants were assessed on experience, including tunnelling and mass earthworks, and on financial strength.
29 September 2026. Following an Environment Agency prosecution at Plymouth Magistrates' Court, South West Water was fined £7,867,733 and ordered to pay £329,993 in costs. The case covered 18 charges (17 illegal water discharge offences and one failure to take remedial measures) between January 2015 and July 2021. They included 231 untreated sewage discharges at Harlyn beach and 336 illegal spills at Bodmin sewage works, along with incidents at Polperro Harbour and Budshead Creek in Plymouth. The Environment Agency describes it as the largest environmental offence fine in the region.
30 September 2026. Thames Water Utilities Limited has launched its fifteenth set of consent requests to creditors. If approved, it can draw a further £170m from its super senior facility in October, and a deadline attached to the facility moves from 30 September to 31 October 2026. Thames has drawn £2.48bn of the £3bn available. Creditors vote by 13 October, and all 14 previous requests were approved.
30 September 2026. Ofwat has proposed accepting enforceable undertakings from Albion Water, a small regulated water and sewerage company, after finding breaches relating to wastewater treatment and the management of its regulated activities. The investigation, opened in January 2026, followed Environment Agency concerns about the Northfleet Eastern Quarry treatment works in Kent, which serves the Castle Hill development at Ebbsfleet. Ofwat found the works regularly received flows close to or above its design capacity and did not consistently provide secondary treatment.
Instead of a penalty of £97,150 (5% of relevant turnover), Albion has offered undertakings on asset reviews, operational management, sampling, record keeping, technical support and governance. It has also offered at least £97,150 for a rainwater harvesting system at a local community institution, paid by the company rather than customers. Representations close at 5pm on 20 October 2026.
The Llyn Celyn Reservoir Auxiliary Spillway project has won the George Gibby Award at the ICE Wales Cymru Awards 2026. Welsh Water delivered it with Mott MacDonald Bentley and Natural Resources Wales at Wales's largest reservoir by volume. The new spillway uses 4.5-metre-high reinforced concrete tipping gates, the largest known system of its kind in the UK, designed to operate only in exceptionally rare floods. Llyn Celyn is part of the Dee Regulation Scheme, which supports supplies for more than 2.5 million people across North Wales and North West England.
Sources: Thames Water (1 October 2026); Environment Agency, GOV.UK (29 September 2026); Thames Water consent request (30 September 2026); Ofwat (30 September 2026); Welsh Water (5 October 2026).
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