The sun is out, the pavements are melting, and suddenly everyone in the office is Googling whether they’re legally allowed to go home. Fair enough, really.
Here’s what you actually need to know. In the UK, there is no maximum legal working temperature. That might come as a shock, but it’s true. Unlike many European countries, British law doesn’t set a hard ceiling on how hot a workplace can get before you can legally down tools.
What the law does say, under the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, is that employers must maintain a “reasonable” temperature and provide thermometers so workers can check. The Health and Safety Executive suggests a minimum of 16°C (13°C for physical work), but offers no equivalent upper limit.
The TUC has long campaigned for a maximum of 30°C, or 27°C for strenuous physical jobs, but that threshold has never made it into law. So while your employer has a duty of care to keep conditions safe, you don’t have an automatic right to refuse work simply because it’s warm.
That said, if temperatures are genuinely dangerous, say, a warehouse hitting 38°C with no ventilation and no water provided, you may have grounds to raise a formal health and safety concern. Your employer would be obliged to take that seriously.
As for your kids, the rules are similarly murky. Schools in England have no legal maximum temperature either. The government guidance suggests 18°C as a comfortable minimum for teaching rooms, but again, there’s no upper limit written into statute.
Head teachers do have discretion to close schools or send pupils home if they judge conditions unsafe, and some have done exactly that during recent heatwaves. But the decision rests with them, not with parents. Keeping your child home without that authorisation could technically count as an unauthorised absence.
Practically speaking, most employers and schools will make reasonable adjustments: relaxed dress codes, flexible hours, extra water breaks. Goodwill tends to go further than legal threats in a heatwave.
With the Met Office warning that summers like this could become the norm rather than the exception, it’s probably time Parliament stopped treating a proper maximum temperature law as a radical idea.
