Thames Water plans to restart desalination plant – after drought has ended

Utility company’s plant, which has only run five times, now has an estimated total cost of £500m Thames Water is preparing the UK’s only mainland desalination plant to restart operations later this year – but it will not be ready until the winter, long after the current drought is likely to have passed. The utility company said that it was hoping to start operating its plant in Beckton, east London, “by the end of the year”, in order to help build up reservoir supplies over the winter for next summer. Water companies across the UK have imposed hosepipe bans as they try to conserve supplies, with much of the country enduring a fifth heatwave that is worsening drought conditions. The Beckton plant has only ever run five times, providing just 7.2bn litres of drinking water or about seven days’ worth of the capital’s daily demand over 15 years. Desalination plants are widely used in the Middle East to provide drinking water. Yet the desalination plant in Beckton has long been regarded as a white elephant. Thames Water, which supplies 16 million customers in London and the Thames valley, fully opened the plant in 2011, spending an initial £270m to install it. It was desi