But as the months went on and the temperature continued to drop, my fears began to dissipate. As with many new builds, my flat is designed to be energy efficient. Cocooned between thick windows and walls in a tower block of dozens of other flats, it was exceptionally warm and cosy – I turned on my heating once. Winter, it turned out, was a breeze.
Yes, it turns out. In the recent spell of hot weather, my flat has been sweltering, making working, sleeping and relaxing almost impossible. In my open-plan kitchen and living room, you can forget about cooking, too.
According to 2025 research by the University of East London’s Sustainability Research Institute, the University of Bath’s Department of Psychology, climate change think-tank E3G and the Charted Institute of Housing, in which 1,580 households were surveyed, “new building design focuses on airtightness and insulation to reduce winter heat loss. This absence of cooling strategies is compounded by a lack of a ‘culture of heat’, where people are not fully attuned to the severity of extreme heat.”
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She adds: “There is currently no national plan addressing overheating or access to cooling. There is an urgent need for a national public health strategy around heat – people link hot weather to nice weather. This is a real challenge and public health and local authorities need to educate people and introduce heat as a risk to the public and encourage preventive actions.”
As heatwaves become more common, many are discovering their homes, offices, trains and Tubes aren’t designed for 34°C – just look at the rise in air-con sales.
None of those solutions are present today, unfortunately. And while having a home to call my own is a privilege, on sweltering days, when I’ve often resorted to using air-conditioned public transport just to escape the heat in my flat, my mind always goes to those who have already seen worse-case scenarios play out as a result of overheating.
Real-time analysis from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London has also found that the heatwave we are currently experiencing is expected to kill almost 600 people. Dr Mehri Khosravi reiterates that while deaths vary each year, the annual number “could rise to between 7,000 and 10,000 annual deaths by 2050”.
With no immediate measures in place, a number of homes (particularly those in London, as well as lower-income homes, which report higher levels of overheating) will continue to feel like furnaces when temperatures inevitably climb.
Until then, many of us are going to have no choice but to do our best to withstand these dangerous conditions. With more new builds and poorly ventilated office conversions popping up around the country, I’m incredibly worried about what the next few summers would look like for a lot of us.
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