💧 Infrastructure Investment

Thursday 21st August 2025

Thames Water Finishes Fortis Green Upgrade—The Unsung Hero of Housing Capacity

We were pleased to see the official announcement on August 21, 2025, that Thames Water completed its nearly £17 million trunk main upgrade at Fortis Green. Infrastructure work, while disruptive, is the unsung hero that enables all future housing.

In North London, much of the water and sewerage network is Victorian-era. Any major infill development, or indeed the high-density regeneration projects, simply cannot proceed unless the existing utilities can cope. Lengthy utility connection delays are a major hidden killer of project Timeline for us. This massive effort to replace 2.4km of ageing trunk main—part of their wider AMP7 programme—is crucial for future-proofing water supplies for over 35,000 properties, helping to enable the delivery of the new homes we need to be building in Islington and Haringey.

Robbins Construction Ltd Opinion: Essential work, but we would strongly argue that utility providers must be penalised heavily for not coordinating these upgrades with known housing delivery schedules. Delays caused by utility companies are currently costing builders (and subsequently, our clients) huge amounts in lost time and extended site costs.