Grantham and Heat Risk Commission response to heatwave and wildfires

Responding to the ongoing heatwave and wildfires in the West Midlands, New Forest and the rest of England, Emma Howard Boyd CBE, Chair of the Heat Risk Commission and Professor in Practice at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said:

“Looking at today’s newspaper front pages and the footage of fires and parched landscapes dominating the news over the past 24 hours, it is impossible not to be taken back to the 40-degree heatwave.

“The question the public is entitled to ask is a simple one: what has actually changed since then? Have we learned the lessons, strengthened our resilience, and properly prepared for increasingly extreme weather, or are we once again watching the same warnings unfold in real time, without being ready to deal with them?

“Even the Prime Minister has recognised that something needs to change. During a panel discussion I chaired last year, he acknowledged that ‘the thinking at the centre of government has not caught up with the changing world.’ That recognition matters, but it now needs to translate into action.

“This is not simply an environmental issue. Extreme heat and wildfires pose serious risks to public health, put pressure on already stretched emergency and health services, disrupt businesses and infrastructure, and carry wider economic consequences. They can also create significant security risks when critical infrastructure, food and water supplies, transport networks and communities are placed under sustained pressure.

“The impacts are already being felt: thousands of deaths, billions of pounds in lost productivity as workplaces overheat, huge agricultural losses and major disruption to travel and transport. These are not abstract future risks. They are real costs being borne by people, businesses and communities today.

“Years have passed, the risks have been clear, and the public deserves to know whether we have genuinely prepared for the risks we now face, or whether we are still relying on hope and hindsight.

“This needs to be gripped at the centre of government and understood across every department and every sector. Climate resilience cannot remain an issue that sits in one policy silo.

“It is a question of health, economic resilience, national security and the basic functioning of our society, and it needs to be treated with the urgency that demands.”