Preparing London for extreme weather

ensure every LA has a robust & up-to-date action plan for dealing with any climate related incidents - with clear information, including who is responsible (& accountable), for what will happen & when. This should cover action for local & central govt, businesses – including local shopkeepers, emergency services, transport services etc etc, and perhaps most importantly residents/general public. Comms will be key in this – not everyone is online or SM sites and I’m sure not everyone reads letters that are sent to individual households!] But we all have a responsibility to do our bit and we need to ensure those more vulnerable - in whatever the circumstance – get the support required.

new builds (residential & commercial) must follow all regulations that will help maintain heat in cold (er) months & keep cool in hot(ter) months. If not then punish the builders with penalty fines and possibly the threat of no more contracts.

no more paving over green areas; plant more trees/greenery

ensure drains are maintained & clear of debris - will help in heavy rainfall

Emergency services should have lists of people particularly at risk from extreme weather events, e.g. those with restricted mobility; mental health problems.  These would enable proactive relief work. 

Are new developments following rules / guidelines for climate resilience based on what we expect conditions to be like in the coming years, based on the latest widely accepted scientific evidence, or are they adhering to out-of-date planning laws written years or decades ago, when priorities may have been different?

The London Plan sets out the requirements for developers when designing new flats to take overheating into account (Policy SI 4). The problem is that when schemes are referred to the GLA planners they simply ignore or fudge the guidelines to maximise the number of new flats being built. Cooling systems in flats should be an absolute last resort as they consume energy and as far as possible overheating should be reduced by shading, orientation, layout and provision of green infrastructure but developers hat this as it is more expensive and reduces the maximum number of flats they can squeeze on a site. Last summer, I spoke to families who were forced to move out of their brand new flats (approved by GLA planners) because they were too hot to live in. With a target of 52,000 new homes a year in London, the vast majority of which are flats, the GLA Planners need to follow through on their policy and make sure new homes are well designed to minimise the consequences of climate change and not simply approve schemes to meet housing targets.

I have a number of suggestions for coping with extreme heat and storms:

• green roofing all public buildings where possible to (a) absorb excess rainfall or slow its progress (b) literally absorb some carbon from the air and (c) reduce pollutants
• tax incentives/grants to encourage private business and residential buildings to also install green roofs
• where green roofs are not practical, encourage them to be painted white to reflect maximum light and heat back into space
• paint some of the main roads white to reflect light and heat back (experiments have been made in Los Angeles with this)
• install public fountains, particularly ones that create a fine cool mist.  This has been part of traditional Arab architecture for more than a millennium. 
• collonade some big shopping streets (e.g. Oxford Street) as you see in cities in Italy and Spain.  Literally the pavement can be in shade. This also has the advantage of creating more space above the collonade (which could be green roof space, retail space or residential space).
• use the Thames more creatively: we have a potential enormous cooling system at our disposal.  Routing some Thames water through pipes can be used to take some heat out of the ground (e.g. particularly central London tube stations) and carried instead out to sea.

I agree with everyone else who laments paved gardens. People should be encouraged (or incentivised) to not have their gardens paved. Even those who use their front garden as a driveway can still have large swathes of it made of permeable material.

Regarding heat, Londoners need to be better informed on how to cope with it. For example, we're told that buses have air conditioning, but we can never check that this is actually the case because everyone opens the windows when it's hot. See cities such as Rome or Madrid, which reach temperatures such as 40 degrees—in that heat, no one opens the windows on the buses because it defeats the point of air conditioning.

London could consider a more holistic shift to greener infrastructure, I.e. working with the natural environment to address heatwaves, reduce surface water flooding. London’s housing stock is also old and not fit for a changing climate. Significant retrofit is needed.

Whilst the conservatives and/or Keir Starmer are in charge we will always be at the mercy of fossil fuel and financial interests.

There is no opposition except within the people 

Tree planting upstream or near areas at risk of flooding can 'lock' the water in and help prevent mass flooding. Trees on street also help regulate local temperatures and reduce heat and so all streets should have funded tree planting campaigns. Trees also often 'soak' up air pollutants. 

We should create publicly funded wildlife corridors throughout the city through networks of protected parks that are allowed to rewild.

SUVs have a hugley outsized contribtion to climate change through huge carbon emissions and the blind spots in the vehicles mean they are dangerous for children. Therefore SUVs should be banned in London as a carbon mitigation and child safety mechanism. 

Building codes/ regulations protecting renters should be updated to insulate rental properties. Like a thermal flask can keep hot things hot and cold things cold. Insulation keeps 'inside heat' inside during the winter to reduce the likelihood of mould and damp and keep families warm and also insulation keeps outside heat outside meaning it offers protection from heatwaves in the summer. The Mayor should be using every power he has to ensure rental properties are insulated to the highest level possible. Landlords often have nearly zero incentive to pay for insulation as the landlord doesn't benefit as they don't live in the property to feel the effect and often landlords don't pay for the energy bill and so don't directly financially benefit from installing insulation. This is where regulators should step in as syatematically renters aren't being protected from the cold in Winter, the heatwaves in Summer or high energy bills from having to heat up draughty houses.

On flash flooding—drains need to be kept in good working order. Public drains are, I believe, the responsibility of the water provider (Thames Water), so there needs to be a better way of making sure the company keeps on top of this and is held to account if it is failing to keep drainage clear. Given the host of other problems with private water companies that we've seen in recent years, maybe a high-level improvement would be to renationalise.

Community heating/cooling systems in blocks of apartments—I'd like to see these taken more seriously. They're common in Europe. Why can't they be here? And could these be integrated with other parts of the city's infrastructure. The London Underground is seriously hot; so too much of the ground that surrounds it. Could this not be harnessed to heat buildings above ground? Retrofitting such solutions could be expensive, but why not consider this for newbuilds?

Some other brief ideas: more tree cover on streets (ie let's plant more trees); white roof paint—London covers a huge area, at scale this could make a difference).

A few suggestions:

1. Stop councils from tearing down council housing that requires renovation and retrofitting. Construction accounts for twice as much carbon emissions as aviation but councils like Southwark and Lambeth (with almost exclusively Labour councillors) are deliberately running estates into the ground so they can demolish them and build private housing units instead. It's a cynical attempt to get lower-income Londoners off their books and send them to Croydon, or even further afield, making that their problem. In the meantime, people who are holding on are suffering from damp and mould, and overheating in the summer. 
2. Stop cutting down trees. The "regeneration" of Elephant and Castle, which saw the Haygate Estate torn down, saw the loss of a huge number of mature trees, with the private developers not plugging the gap. It's disgraceful. 
3. Install heat pumps on the tube. Some of the older and deeper lines like the Victorian and Central get oppressively hot. Is there not a way to install a heat pumping system which could take this heat out of the underground tunnels and instead use it for heating council homes? That's a win-win in my view.
4. Push for utility nationalisation (or municipalisation). Why should we be paying so much for our utilities? Last year during the heatwave the south circular was flooded due to a burst water main, during a heatwave and hosepipe ban? Thames water has been ripping off customers for years and taking on debt to pay for shareholders' profits. It's a national embarrassment and a waste of money and precious water. 
5. Urban greening, gardening and food-growing. The GLA and its partners needs to do more work to connect those without access to green space with urban gardening and food growing projects. I bought a butternut squash the other day and it was from Namibia, but in a couple of weeks I'll be harvesting my own at a community gardening project I work at! Food growing needs to be woven into the fabric of our urban spaces.

I have seen a massive improvement in Lung related illnesses in Greater London. The congestion charge has definitely made living in London more greener. I don't care what anyone says but the filth, pollution and smog has definitely gone! Its vanished. Absolutely amazing how much cleaner the environment has become.

But now for the big elephant in the room. We need action on Climate change. Central london has to seriously wake up or we will have lives lost here similar to the destruction in Libya. Our sewerage system  overflows over fifty times a year into the Thames. That is fifty times too much for me and most sane people in London(I think) . This need to be actioned by central london immediately. Invest , invest and invest now!!!

Why can't the entire TfL fleet be air conditioned or cooled, new trains are a missed but TfL are dithering and causing us to wait unnecessarily! 

I am often frustrated by the opaque workings of government and the excessive profiteering of privatised, utilities companies without providing a service fit for purpose. Rantings of 'how are you going to pay for that' while taking on huge loan and grants to give their executives (and share holders) seismic remunerations , bonuses and dividends; Bank-of-England quantitative easing; government unaccounted-for grants and cronyism getting worse and disregarded. We need governments that value accountability.

ULEZ can only work with an improved and affordable transport system. If it were cheaper and easier to get from one part of London to another without a car, and you reliably knew you could get to your destination and home quite easily then less people would depend on their cars. Singapore is a good example. But making hard up Londoners even more poor isn’t the answer.  My car has been out of action this week, and I have spent more money on public transport than on petrol and it takes me one hour longer than usual between destinations each way! 

AIR POLLUTION 

I support the ULEZ scheme. How can we get that scheme adopted in all cities and eventually all UK?

Grey Water System.  
Rainwater and non-greasy washing up water can be used to water plants and gardens. Simply fill a bucket or water barrel with it and use as required.

I've seen new-build bungalows in tiny New Zealand that recycle all non sewage water through a grey water system. It is filtered and cleaned, then stored in a large tank under ground. This clean water supplies the home with all water. Almost no water is drawn from the outside. Grey water includes roof rainwater and sinks but not sewage.

This lowers your cost of metered water supply immediately and  reduces the amount of fresh water supply from the water board supplier, reservoirs and rivers, saving everyone money.

Why can't we do this here? When asked Thames Water had no interest or schemes to investigate grey water. A cynic might say that does not increase company profits. But it could, if appropriate targets were set.