The Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development( RAPID) has agreed to a request from Thames Water to push back its Gate three submission for the London Water Recycling project - Teddington Direct River Abstraction scheme to December 2024.

Replying to a letter dated 24 October from Giles Stevens, Director of Regulatory Strategy and Innovation at Thames Water requesting to move its Gate three submission from summer 2024 to 10 December 2024, Paul Hickey, Managing Director of RAPID wrote on 7 November that RAPID considered the request to be reasonable and agreed to the extension.

Since being established, RAPID has overseen the development of Strategic Resource Options schemes through a gated process, supported by the Environment Agency's National Appraisal Unit (NAU).

Rob Bromley Director of Operations at Jacobs responsible for Environment, Planning and Consents had previously written to Paul Hickey on 6 September on behalf of the water company to confirm the proposed submission date of Gate 3, Prior to that Rob Bromley had written in summer 2023 to note that the Gate 3 submission was moving to summer 2024 to take account of Thames Water’s revised draft Water Resource Management Plan.

Since 2023, a public consultation on site options for the Teddington Direct River Abstraction (TDRA) project has taken place and the Secretary of State has issued a Direction under Section 35 of the Planning Act 2008 to treat the TDRA Project as a development for which development consent is required.

The TDRA Project was subsequently registered with the Planning Inspectorate and Thames Water has been refining the scheme design through 2024 to address consultation feedback.

The letter dated 6 September explained that Thames Water has now refined its pre-application programme and intends to seek an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) scoping opinion in October 2024.

“ I understand that the NAU and RAPID would support a LWR Gate 3 submission in December 2024 once an EIA scoping opinion has been received for the TDRA Project. The revision to the Gate 3 submission would have no impact on the overall delivery programme, “ Rob Bromley wrote.

Writing to Giles Stevens, Paul Hickey commented:

“Gate three of the RAPID programme represents an important checkpoint on the way to the solution being prepared for its Development Consent Order (DCO) application. You should use the additional time to make sure your gate three submission will meet regulators’ expectations and to prepare a good quality and complete submission.

“We are pleased to see that the movement of the gate three submission date will not in itself impact on the overall timing of the water into supply date for the London Water Recycling scheme.”

Thames Water is working in partnership with Jacobs Mott MacDonald joint venture to help deliver the Teddington Direct River Abstraction (TDRA) project – the joint venture was appointed by Thames in September 2024 as its Technical Partner to lead development proposals for vital new infrastructure to tackle the risk of drought in London.

The appointment as Technical Partner followed a competitive procurement process under the recently established Thames Water SRO (Strategic Resource Options) Technical Partner Framework.

If approved for construction, the nationally significant project will begin operation in 2033, providing up to 75 million litres of water each day during periods of prolonged dry weather.