Forty degrees. Not Madrid. Not Athens. Coventry. If that still sounds absurd to you, climate scientists would like a word.
The summer of 2022 was the first time the UK recorded temperatures above 40°C, hitting 40.3°C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire. What felt like a freakish, once-in-a-generation event is, according to Met Office projections, set to become a regular fixture within two to three decades. Not a heatwave. Just… summer.
The problem isn’t just the heat itself. It’s that almost nothing in Britain is built for it. Around 85% of UK homes have no air conditioning, compared to roughly 90% of homes in the United States. Our Victorian terraces and 1970s semis were designed to trap warmth, not shed it. In a 38°C July, they become ovens.
The NHS already feels the strain. During the 2022 heatwave, the UK Health Security Agency recorded over 2,800 excess deaths linked to the heat. Hospital admissions spiked. GP surgeries were overwhelmed. And that was a two-week event. Imagine that heat arriving every June and staying until September.
“We are not a country that has ever needed to take heat seriously,” one urban planning consultant told a recent housing conference. “That mindset needs to change, and it needs to change fast.”
Some cities are starting to act. Greater Manchester and London have both published heat resilience strategies, pushing for more urban tree cover, green roofs, and shaded public spaces. But progress is patchy, funding is tight, and planning rules haven’t kept pace with the science.
There’s also the inequality angle, which rarely gets enough attention. Those most at risk from extreme heat, the elderly, people in poorly insulated flats, low-income families who can’t afford fans or cooling systems, are also the least likely to benefit from expensive retrofits or new-build standards.
Britain has spent centuries complaining it’s too cold and grey. The irony is that warmer summers might have been genuinely welcome, once. But 40°C isn’t warmth. It’s a public health emergency in slow motion.
The question isn’t really whether the heat is coming. It is. The question is whether we’ll still be bickering about planning permissions when it arrives.
