I was under the (wrong) impression that in a science PHD you just submitted your thesis after 3-4 years, didnt know you were expected to publish papers throughout, How many do people do? are they just in your own name?

The number of publications you will be an author on, and when you publish them are highly dependent on your subject area, how the project goes and how fast your supervisor gets round to submitting stuff. Publication is not required to pass a PhD in the UK, but it helps in getting a job. A paper arising from a science PhD will never be single author, your supervisor will be corresponding author.

Always good to publish some work prior to viva if you can. That way your work has already been peer reviewed (and found to be of the required standard). As Post-doc said, your papers are likely to have multiple authors but if the paper is mainly your work, you should be given first author position.

Publication is not essential for a science PhD in the UK. If you're lucky enough to get enough good results early on you may have enough work for a paper or two to be published before you submit your thesis.