Establishing a National Heat Risk Commision

Adeline Talks Series Event Note

The ‘Adeline Talks’ series celebrates the legacy of Adeline Stuart-Watt, a highly respected and very sadly missed friend and colleague at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who died in April 2023. The event series brings together senior experts and colleagues from different sectors to tackle difficult and complex climate adaptation and resilience challenges in the UK in the form of an annual roundtable.

The inaugural event that this note describes took place in London on 11 February 2025. It focused on the establishment of a National Heat Risk Commission for the UK. The discussion was informed by the Grantham Research Institute’s work to assess and enhance governance responses and understand public perceptions to extreme heat. The work aims to analyse ways in which the UK can better prepare for periods of extreme heat.

The findings in the note reflect the authors’ interpretation of the roundtable discussion.