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    £7bn Abingdon White Horse Reservoir: DCO stage and design notes for engineers

    May 14, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    £7bn Abingdon White Horse Reservoir: DCO stage and design notes for engineers

    First reported on New Civil Engineer

    30 Second Briefing

    Plans for the £7bn White Horse Reservoir near Abingdon in the Upper Thames catchment have been confirmed by regulators as sufficiently detailed to move to the next planning stage, with additional funding released to advance the scheme. The strategic raw water storage project, promoted by Thames Water, is now being prepared for a Development Consent Order (DCO) application expected in November. Geotechnical and civil teams can expect imminent demand for detailed ground investigation, embankment design and flood risk modelling to support the nationally significant infrastructure consent process.

    Technical Brief

    • Long-term operation will require dam safety monitoring systems, surveillance regimes and periodic risk re-assessment under UK reservoir law.

    Our Take

    Being in the Upper Thames, any major storage scheme will likely be modelled against recent UK drought and flood sequences, which in our coverage has been a key driver for Environment Agency and Ofwat positions on large-scale water resource infrastructure.

    With New Civil Engineer heavily involved in digital-delivery discussions, including its recent webinar on BIM and digital handover, this project is a prime candidate to become a test bed for more integrated common data environments across design, consenting and eventual asset management.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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