内容摘要："There are government schemes and small grants, but rural entrepreneurs often don't know how to access them.

"There are government schemes and small grants, but rural entrepreneurs often don't know how to access them.

With climate change likely to bring hotter, drier summers, the chances of drought could increase in the decades ahead, the Met Office says.These preparations have been brought into sharp focus by

, according to the Environment Agency, which says it is watching the situation closely in other regions.Extra demand from new houses, data centres and other sectors could further squeeze supplies, but no major reservoirs have been completed in England since 1992, shortly after the water sector was privatised.Last year the government and water companies announced proposals to build nine new reservoirs by 2050.

Together they have the potential to provide 670 million litres of extra water per day, they say.That's in addition to the Havant Thicket reservoir project in Hampshire, which is already under way and is expected to be completed by 2031.

The government also says that it intends to pass legislation to automatically make the other seven proposed reservoirs "nationally significant", so the final decision would be taken by national government.

"Reservoir projects are very complex infrastructure projects that are slow to take forward, and so anything that can be done to streamline that process can be a positive thing," said David Porter, senior vice president of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).Another, perhaps more critical legal battle concerns allegations that Lee made a knowingly false statement during a debate in the last presidential campaign.

During the debate, which aired on South Korean television in December 2021, Lee had denied personally knowing Kim Moon-ki, a key figure in a corruption-ridden land development scandal who had taken his own life just days earlier.Prosecutors allege that claim was false, thus violating the Public Official Election Act, and in November 2024 Lee was convicted of the false statements charge and given a one-year suspended prison sentence.

Then, in March, an appeals court cleared him of the charges – only for that ruling to be overturned by South Korea's Supreme Court. At the time of writing, the case is still awaiting a verdict.Other threats against Lee's future political ambitions posed a more fatal danger.