The UK is experiencing some of the hottest May weather ever recorded, with temperatures surpassing 35C in parts of England on Tuesday.
Campaigners have warned that Britain’s public buildings are dangerously unprepared for rising temperatures, calling for better cooling systems in hospitals, care homes and other spaces used by vulnerable people.
More than 3,000 heat-related deaths were recorded during the UK’s 2022 heatwave. Older people, newborn babies and those with underlying health conditions are considered particularly vulnerable during periods of extreme heat.
With the hot weather continuing in some parts of the UK, we asked people how the intense weather was affecting them. Here are some of their responses.
‘My hospital room has become unbearable’
Karl, a Methodist minister from south London, says being in hospital during the heatwave has highlighted how unprepared many public buildings are for climate change.
Karl, 42, has spent nearly a week in hospital with myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle caused by a virus. While he praises NHS staff and volunteers for their care, he says conditions on the ward have at times been unbearable.
At one point, he says, the thermometer on the wall of his hospital room reached 29C. NHS guidance recommends hospital wards caring for vulnerable patients are kept between 19C and 23C, though many older NHS buildings are vulnerable to overheating.
“Yesterday, I was splashing water on my arms and legs and face to try and cool down, because the room was just unbearable,” Karl says. “At one point I couldn’t stay in the room because I was starting to feel sickly.”
He says staff have done everything they can to help patients cope, including providing fans, ice for water jugs, and regular reminders to stay hydrated. Volunteers have also been bringing round ice lollies. “I really can’t praise the staff enough,” he says. “They’ve been superb.”
But Karl believes the heatwave shows the urgent need to modernise infrastructure as the climate warms.
“The government needs to speed up investment in infrastructure,” he says. “It’s not enough just to make nice noises. You need to change things.”
‘The rapid change catches people out in the UK’
Robert Vernon, 74, who lives in a retirement complex in Stratford-upon-Avon, says Britons need to learn to adapt to hotter weather.
Born in the UK but raised in Australia from the age of five, Vernon spent much of his life living in hotter climates before returning to Britain about 15 years ago. He says the biggest challenge in the UK is how suddenly temperatures change.
Living among more than 100 retired residents, Vernon worries many people do not know how to cope safely with extreme temperatures. “The rapid variance is what catches people out physically … I’ve even seen some people here dress exactly the same way as they would have last week when it was 14C,” he says.
He has suggested his neighbours spend the hottest part of the day in the local shopping centre to enjoy the air con. “I tell them, you can sit down, have a nice cup of coffee, kill a couple hours and when you come out, it’s cooler.”
‘We sleep outside in the intense heat’
Tahir, 58, who works in external relations and lives in High Wycombe with his partner and two teenage children, says trips abroad have informed how he now copes with the high temperatures in the UK.
“When I was a teenager visiting my relatives in Pakistan, we would sleep outside on the flat roof when it got too hot,” he says.
This memory came back to him during the record-breaking heat in the UK in 2022, when his house became “unbearable”. “We all slept outside in the garden on blow-up beds and it was lovely,” he says, adding that whenever the temperature creeps above 30C, they decamp to the garden.
“I know not everyone has an outside space, but for those who have, it can be a way to get a good night’s sleep,” he says. “I have since suggested it to friends, but they think I’m bonkers.”
‘I was very climate aware’
Mary Ann Hooper, 82, from Wirksworth in Derbyshire, says the heat reminds her of childhood summers growing up in the US.
Unlike some of her friends and neighbours, she has managed to stay cool at home thanks to some foresight on her part when she bought her bungalow 10 years ago.
“I had it completely renovated. I was very climate aware, I had it insulated on the outside and all sorts of things done,” she says.
She also installed a “brise soleil” – an external timber structure that shades her south-facing windows in summer while still allowing lower winter sunlight to warm the house.
“It’s very common on the continent,” she says. “But even with all the discussion about cooling homes in this country, it doesn’t seem to have entered into anything I’ve seen.”
‘It brings home the legacy we are creating’
Shirley, who is retired and lives in Somerset, says looking after her grandchildren during the extreme heat has made her concerned for their future.
“I am being affected emotionally by the current heatwave,” she says. “When your granddaughter, who is 21 months old, doesn’t want to eat, can’t go out in the heat to the park for a swing, it brings home the legacy we are creating.
“When an older grandchild, who is 13, arrives home tired after sitting on a sweltering school coach in traffic with a heavy school bag that also holds a synthetic PE kit, you question how many times they filled their water bottle today.”
Shirley, who has three grandchildren, believes there needs to be better education for the “whole population on exactly what climate we as a species have created” and growth should “support every aspect of planetary and species health”.
She adds: “If you have grandchildren, you do consider the future quite deeply – by putting money away for them, keeping things for them. Now I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, what good would any of that do?’”
