With temperatures set near 40°C in parts of the UK this week, both employees and pupils could suffer from the heat in stuffy workplaces and classrooms.
Wednesday and Thursday will be the height of the heatwave, with the Met Office placing parts of central England, southern England and Wales under a rare red extreme heat alert.
But what does this mean for workplaces and schools?
No maximum work temperature
While there is official guidance on the minimum indoor temperatures workplaces should adhere to, such information doesn’t exist for maximum temperatures.
“There’s not a legal maximum workplace temperature where we can say, if it hits X degrees, then we can down tools and leave. But that doesn’t mean that employers sort of have no duty,” Lucy Needham, employment solicitor at Lime Solicitors, told The i Paper.
“There’s no legal maximum workplace temperature because there is no one-size-fits-all sort of criteria. Somebody who works in a bakery or somewhere where there’s food being prepared would work in a hotter environment than someone, say, in an office or a school,” she added.
Professor Simon Hodder, an expert in Environmental ergonomics at Loughborough University, also noted in a statement that humidity plays a role in how survivable a temperature can be: “The challenge for setting an upper limit is due to the interaction of different environmental parameters. We often use air temperature to determine exactly how hot we are, but it’s the interaction with humidity that makes that temperature good or bad.
“A high temperature with low humidity feels a lot better than a high temperature and high humidity.”
‘Heat is classed as a hazard’
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the UK’s independent regulator for workplace welfare, says on its website: “All workers are entitled to an environment where risks to their health and safety are properly controlled. Heat is classed as a hazard and comes with legal obligations like any other hazard.”
Ahead of this week’s heatwave, the HSE advised employers to implement measures including providing adequate ventilation and shade, providing workers with free water, introducing flexible work patterns and breaks, and relaxing formal dress codes. For outdoor employees, the HSE recommended rescheduling work to cooler times of the day and to provide shade and drinking water.
It urged workers to use fans, take regular breaks, work away from direct sunlight and sources of heat and, if working in a very physically demanding jobs in hot conditions, to drink 250ml of water every 15 minutes.
Due to there being no maximum heat limit in workplaces, employees cannot legally demand time off work or work from home purely for heat reasons, although this can be discussed with their employer.
Employers “do have a duty of care towards their employees, and that’s a legal requirement where they need to be looking at the procedures that they have in place for extreme weather”, Needham said.
She added that if employers don’t give adequate protection for outdoor employees against sunburn, heat stroke and dehydration, they “leave themselves susceptible to personal injury claims or litigation if somebody gets ill”.
Government does not typically advise schools to shut
As with offices, there is no official legislation or guidance on the maximum temperatures for schools.
The Department for Education (DfE) says it does not typically advise schools to close during hot weather “because school attendance is the best way for pupils to learn and reach their potential, and hot weather can usually be managed safely.”
The majority of schools in the UK are set to stay open during this heatwave, though some schools have opted to close early.
Temperatures in schools have become a major concern, with teachers telling The i Paper that students cannot concentrate in the heat, meaning they could lose days of learning.
To protect students from the heat, the DfE suggests that schools relax uniform rules, allowing children to wear looser, light-coloured clothing, provide and encourage children to drink more water and ensure classrooms are well ventilated.
It also recommends that children not take part in vigorous physical activity during the day.
The Climate Change Committee and the Trades Union Congress have both supported demands for a maximum temperature limit in classrooms that would allow schools to close when it gets too hot.
The DfE has said that it is “carefully considering” these recommendations and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has not ruled out the possibility of changes to the current guidance.
Your rights if your child’s school is closed
If schools do close, it could put working parents into a difficult situation when having to unexpectedly look after their children.
Needham said: “Under the Employment Rights Act, employees are legally entitled to some unpaid time off to handle time off for dependents in an initial crisis situation, which would include extreme weather.”
She said that the policy for extreme heat is the same as snow days so employees could expect to receive one to two days off but, in more extreme circumstances, may have to talk to their employer about taking annual leave or unpaid leave.
“If we continue to see these hot summers coming and becoming more frequent, there may be some change to the current policies,” she added.
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