Water supply in the London area was regulated by local acts and royal charters on a piecemeal basis from 1543.

A select committee endorsed this view in 1828 and recommended that a scheme should be devised by Thomas Telford, to supply the whole metropolis with clean water.

The Metropolis Water Act 1871 introduced further regulation, but fell short of taking the supply into public control.

In the meantime the corporations of major provincial towns such as Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds began operating their own municipal supplies.

[2] Starting in October 1903 a series of arbitration hearings was convened to determine the amount of compensation payable to the water companies.

It comprised the entire county of London and much of Middlesex, with outer boundaries at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, Loughton and East Ham in Essex, Dartford and Foots Cray in Kent, and Malden, Surbiton, Esher and Kingston upon Thames in Surrey.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica described "Water London" as "an irregular area extending from Ware in Hertfordshire to Sevenoaks in Kent, and westward as far as Ealing and Sunbury."

When the flow of the Thames over Teddington Weir was less than 170 million gallons a day (8.945 m3/s) no abstraction was authorised except with the permission of the Local Government Board.