The recently published Heat Resilience and Sustainable Cooling report from the House of Commons Committee outlines the issues and gives the Government has two months to respond.

In July 2022 the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) issued its first ever Level 4 heat-health alert as temperature records were broken and 40C was recorded in the UK for the first time, and more increases are predicted as the planet warms.

In short, it’s getting hotter. This has consequences for the built environment, creating a greater need for air conditioning (and thus energy, helping to create a spiral of heat issues) and retrofitting of insulation on housing stock.

Amongst the recommendations are, of course accelerating progress on the grid and net-zero, but also nature-based solutions, such as parks, trees, water bodies and green infrastructure such as green roofs. These are particularly effective in urban areas where the ‘urban heat island’ effect raising temperatures in cities beyond those in rural areas.

But another core issue is the heat resilience of homes. The population spends on average 90 per cent of its time indoors, yet the UK housing stock is not designed to cope with excessive heat. With a Department for Energy Security and Net Zero finding that by the 2030s bedrooms could breach 26C overnight.

Four out of five homes that will exist in 2050 are already built, meaning that the scale of retrofitting insulation and heat abating measures for existing homes to protect them from overheating is “vast” according to the report.

Ultimately, the Committee believes that a comprehensive national heat resilience strategy is required to ensure coordinated action on all fronts.

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