Government leaves ‘serious unanswered questions’ on heatwave resilience plans

The Government has left some “serious unanswered questions” over plans for national resilience to heatwaves, MPs have said.

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) said the Government’s response to its report on heat resilience and sustainable cooling “falls short” or is “lacking clarity” on certain points.

In the paper published in January, the group of cross-bench MPs outlined how rising temperatures could affect the health of the British population as well as contribute to UK emissions due to increased energy use from air conditioning.

The MPs warned that the UK’s housing stock is not designed to cope with excessive heat, with millions of homes already experiencing summertime overheating.

As part of a series of recommendations, the committee said the Government should launch a national retrofit programme to adapt the UK’s houses for the demands of net zero, which could be delivered via local authorities with the help of long-term funding.

Elsewhere, the EAC recommended that standards covering overheating in new buildings should be extended to cover not just material changes of use but also the refurbishment of existing properties.

The report also focused on how passive cooling can be achieved through nature-based solutions, such as parks, trees, water bodies and green infrastructure like green roofs.

The paper cited the Climate Change Committee’s findings that there was “no requirement for local authorities to protect or provide green space”, and that funding commitments were required to maintain parks and green spaces.

The committee called for ministers to take action to expand urban green spaces, including by mandating local authorities to use Natural England’s new Green Infrastructure Framework (GIF), which is intended to help planners boost nature in towns and cities.

The MPs also urged the Government to introduce a statutory requirement for local authorities to protect green space.

However, ministers fell short of committing to a retrofit programme on the scale suggested and did not say whether they had plans to extend the overheating standards, the EAC said.

In its response, the Government also argued that local authorities are responsible for delivering new green areas and it is currently not planning to mandate them to use the new GIF framework.

Philip Dunne, EAC chairman, said: “Extreme heat is already affecting health and livelihoods in the UK.

“While there is much to welcome in this response, there are still serious unanswered questions about how the Government plans to respond to a rapidly warming UK climate.

“This is frankly a missed opportunity.”

Dr Radhika Khosla, from the University of Oxford who acted as specialist adviser for the EAC’s inquiry, said: “The Government’s response is a positive start – it demonstrates a recognition of the threat of extreme heat and details the existing steps in place to mitigate it.

“However, the levels of coordination, knowledge, and capacity building required for a rigorous National Heat Resilience and Sustainable Cooling Strategy are not yet in place.

“Looking ahead and recognising the threat of extreme heat and the existing measures that can help are important first steps, but there remains a lack of urgency and commitment to further action.”

A Government spokesperson said: “We have set out a robust five-year plan to respond to the impacts of a changing climate and strengthen our national resilience – with action to improve infrastructure, promote a greener economy and safeguard food production.

“We are the first major economy to halve our emissions and have already taken steps to manage the risks of climate change, including committing to minimise overheating in the Heat and Building Strategy and bringing in a new warning systems to alert the public to heatwaves.

“In addition, homes built to the new Future Homes Standard will be ‘zero-carbon ready’, meaning no further work will be needed as the electricity grid decarbonises.”