Seawater on tap: As Britain faces one of the driest Aprils on record, could we be drinking desalinated water this summer? - 26th Apr 2011

As Britain basks in the sun during one of the driest April's on record it seems one water provider has started up a revolutionary seawater plant just in time.

The £270million Thames Water desalination plant, which took four years to build, was finally completed in June 2010.

It works by removing the salt from the brackish water in the Thames Estuary before pumping the filtered liquid into its vast reservoirs.

Engineers started running water through the system for the first time three weeks ago.

'We began using the desalination plant at one-sixth output on March 30, not because we need to but as part of the fine-tuning of the works and the training of its operators, and we have been using it intermittently since then,' Simon Evans of Thames Water told Mail Online. Read More