London’s risk from rising temperatures

I have spent a lot of time in France and Spain recently. Their windows are designed for heat - tall and narrow, and they open inwards so that external roller aluminium shutters can be closed but the windows opened either sideways or slanted open at the top. And they have heat pumps which are also air conditioners in summer

The heat increases pollen and pollution. These are some of my asthma triggers.  During the recent heatwaves I have had to sleep in a closed room with the fan on overnight. Asthma often means I have to take a lot of inhaler medication and also steroids which is not great for the health! We need to green up Enfield and most of London. People are frying in tower block flats with nowhere to escape the heat at night.  You can't go to a cool space at night - that's when people have problems sleeping and sleep deprivation wears you down and makes you ill.

My flat was unbearably hot this summer, so much so I had to go and sleep at my parent’s house. I also bought an AC unit but it’s too loud to use when sleeping. If I opened my windows at night I couldn’t sleep either because the outside area was too loud-  people gather there and play very loud music overnight in hot weather. I live in a private rented flat so can’t make the changes in the survey such as shutters. I was thinking that if I bought a property in future I’d look into getting proper AC installed. I think when they’re building new homes now they need to really look at how they will be in the heat. 

The  buses and tube are also unbearably hot- I understand there are some difficulties with the tube but surely buses could be air conditioned? Other countries do it. 

I work in a hospital and my workplace again was unbearably hot- no provision made for staff at all (NHS!) but we wouldn’t be able to do the flexible shift pattern suggested in the survey as healthcare workers need to be there all the time. 

I would love to be able to swim in nice cold water, my concern would be sunburn!! 

I do worry about how the heat will impact nature :( 

I’m glad that someone is looking into the issue though. 

I am frustrated because our council has not taken good care of the trees in our area. They are aggressively and repeatedly trimmed, and many have been cut down. It means much less shade. The streets and our homes are warmer because of it. 

I was pregnant throughout three heatwaves in 2025 and a period of extended drought. I then had a new born in the fourth heatwave of the year. Public transport- train ans tubes were unbearable. There was no temperature regulation, trains were overpacked with people which added to the temperatures. It is too much. 
Lewisham Hospital maternity ward has no air con or temperature regulation. The fan by my bed was broken. Windows don’t open. How do we expect women to give birth in these conditions? It is appalling. 
Green spaces are increasingly required in this time of global warming, but are under increased pressure to perform. Grass is left to go dry and people complain because they don’t understand what is happening and the need to conserve water. 
I look forward to seeing the mayors plans for tackling urban heat. 

We need legislations that forces buildings (new and old) to be climate adapted. Shutters and/or covers over windows should be mandatory, especially south facing windows. As well as white/green/solar roofs. You should also not have to have freeholder approval to install air-con. 

And more trees 🌳 

Something I think really needs reconsidering is our buses. The air conditioning is non existent and on a hot day it is like a greenhouse on wheels. The windows are too small for any breeze to make it through and if you’re stuck in traffic there’s no air at all. I often feel really unwell on the bus in hot weather. There is a lot of focus on the tube but I have not seen anyone discussing measures that could be taken to make buses more climate appropriate such as shaded windows like they have in hotter countries, and better air con.

We had to buy an air-conditioning unit as our entire development is predominantly glass. It took two full days running the air-con ar full blast with all the windows shut to cool our flat to an acceptable temperature. We had to walk our dog in the underground car park under our building, as the pavement / plaza outside our development was so hot (I imagine due to the glass reflecting heat) that the soles of my shoes started to melt as I walked across it. Cooling the flat was expensive but it felt like we had very little choice as we were so concerned about our health and the health of our dog.

This summer I am avoiding going out as much as possible. I feel like London is inaccessible in high temperatures. My office for example is best served by the Central Line, yet I am actually scared to travel on the tube given how unbearable the heat is. This means that I take a longer, more expensive, journey just to avoid the heat but at least get access to some air-con. When this route has a problem I have actually considered staying in the office until either it is resolved, OR walking the almost 4 hour journey home instead of getting hot stuffy oublic transport.

I wish there were more covered walkways like in south east Asia, they would shelter from both sun and rain. You could cover the roof with solar panels or plants. Same for covered car parks. 

Climate-resilient, 

I was lucky enough not to be in London during the 2022 heatwave but have been in London during what has been a very dry and continuously hot summer. I see plenty of people insisting this is a) normal and b) can just be solved with air conditioning. It is not normal and meeting global warming with further energy consumption is counterproductive. If we are to pursue more sustainable long term solutions to urban heating, these are the things we need to address.

• Lack of natural shade - the front of my house is south facing and overlooks a small carpark which has no shade and no trees. The heat is reflected off the cars and the pavement back up to the houses, which considering we live in a valley makes it even harder for heat to escape. We urgently need more trees planted across London in the denser urban areas, along with benches placed underneath and near them to allow people to rest and cool down in the shade.
• Inefficient transport infrastructure - if there's one thing I'd urge London to adopt to cope with extreme heat and the pollution that comes with it would be to follow the likes of Paris and ban cars/make public transport such as buses or the tube free during periods of intense heat. Sitting in a traffic jam during the hottest part of the day is the reality for many commuters (and school children) and as we can't adapt our working and living schedules to avoid the hottest parts of the day we need to reduce the time spent in it.
• A need for more drought-resistant green spaces in urban planning and the banning of astroturf - as summer becomes drier we need to create more spaces for greenery and shade but we also need to look at planting that can cope with the extreme heat. We should also ban astroturf for both business and private usage, both to increase greenery for pollinators and to reduce the heat retention that all this plastic is prompting.

For a short term, immediate solution, I hang blackout material outside my windows during the hottest days. It makes a huge difference to the heat in the house. I was able to sew them to fit our windows which I know not everyone has time/resources to do. I wondered if this is something that could be relatively cheaply made and given by councils to council housing tenants (or anyone else) if window sizes are standard. Happy to discuss. It makes life more bearable while bigger solutions are being discussed.

Working in a school it was very clear our building was not able to withstand the heat. Children were taken ill and it was impossible to teach during the high heat, regardless of moving to find cooler spots in school. 

We resulted in children dunking their feet in trays of water. 

There seems to be an acknowledged issue with new builds - elevated storeys, often single aspect, built to focus on insulation in the winter and not cooling in the summer. Since these represent an increasing percentage of housing stock, and presumably there is limited scope to change the headline situation for these flats (eg the aspect is what it is) some specific info around what is doable would, I think, be very useful. 

In ‘22 we lived in a rental that was so poorly insulated, it was 35°C inside, worse in the bedroom which was right below the roof. We had one window unit a/c which we used to try and make it comfortable to sleep, and several fans downstairs. We had blackout curtains everywhere but they made little to no difference. One of our pugs ended up in hospital because of the heat. He ended up staying 2 days in an oxygen tank and they were considering putting him down. Thankfully he made a good recovery when temperatures dropped. We couldn’t let the dogs out in the back at the house because it was so hot, and had to use a pram to get them to the nearest park with shade. It was horrible on the tube or the bus. 

This year we have moved to a new house that we own. We installed a/c in all the main rooms and have a portable unit up in the loft extension for guests or very hot days when you have to be up there. We have blackout curtains and blinds at the moment, but if I could I would install outside shades asap. We have a garden with grass, a tree and a parasol. We have a park less than 5min away so are able to walk the dog at cooler times, the park has lots of trees so there is shade available. We are mostly using tube lines with a/c, I prefer taking longer but being cooler. 
I think buildings and streets need more shade. Someone needs to figure out a way to evacuate the heat from the tube tunnels and stations.  New houses need to be built with a/c units, and outside shutters like in hotter countries. Use white paint on roofs and subsidise insulation installation.
 

The overcrowding and lack of air conditioning on the tube (I’m thinking of the central line particularly) is unbearable. People are miserable and shouldn’t have to deal with this inadequate service just to get to work. I fear it’s going to get even worse now with companies asking people to come into the office more often.

Agree with some of the comments here that good urban planning of the public realm is not complicated and we can learn a lot from Spanish cities for example. We just need planning regulations to encourage better cooling measures in our cities and to stop allowing urban interventions that do not prioritise reducing heat gain. I live on the top floor of a 1940’s block, it is cheaply built as it is post war, there are no cavity walls, no wall insulation and we have a flat roof with no insulation, the black felt roof heats up immensely in the summer, the walls heat up too and I can feel the heat just by putting my hand on the internal side of the wall in my living room. There is no way to shade the outside of the windows to stop the glass heating up and heating the flat like a greenhouse. I can’t put awnings on because of the height, there is not room for shutters because the windows are flush with the outside wall. The government insulation programmes do not cover flat roofs. My flat becomes the same temperature as outside, in 2022 it was 37 degrees inside my flat despite closing all the windows mid morning and shutting all the curtains. I would open them up only once it was midnight and the temp dropped. Despite this I couldn’t enter my living room during the day or sleep at night so I went to stay with my parents. Outside the coolest places were ones with trees, and getting away from tarmac and roads, going to a park and sitting in the shade. I walked around with a parasol and hat and went to the Docklands on trains with AC to swim. After 2022. I paid to have the flat roof painted with solar reflective paint which has reduced the temperature by about 2 degrees. We are moving out because of the heat. The trees on my road have been cut down so the heat is even worse on the road when outside on the pavement. 

London is utterly miserable during extreme heat. I have to leave the capital and try to escape during heatwaves. I leasehold my flat and the landlord wont allow me to install air conditioning. It's like living in a green house. I look forward to September each year and dread the arrival of June. The other 9 months I love living here.