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How the housing sector is responding to the risk of overheating
Social landlords are taking steps to address the risk of overheating homes, after the UK recorded its hottest summer on record last year. Kate Youde explores some examples of what they are doing
Social landlords are taking steps to address the risk of overheating homes, after the UK recorded its hottest summer on record last year. Kate Youde explores some examples of what they are doing #UKhousingLast summer, housing association WHG provided its first ‘cool room’. Residents of Ellum Pointe, a scheme for over-55s in Walsall, were struggling with high temperatures in their flats during the June heatwave, so the 23,000-home landlord turned the block’s ground-floor community room into a space where they could cool down.
Staff kept the windows and door closed to prevent heat getting in, and installed a portable air conditioning unit, says Jo Shields, head of sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) at WHG. “We are now looking at ventilation in that building and what we can do to manage that problem out as we roll into summer this year and beyond.”
The approach is one other landlords may consider as they seek to protect their own tenants from overheating, a hazard likely to become more prevalent as global temperatures continue to climb.
Last year was the sunniest and warmest on record in the UK. By 2070, the Met Office projects UK summers will be 1-6°C warmer than in 1990 and up to 60% drier; winters will be 1-4.5°C warmer and up to 30% wetter.
So what steps are housing associations taking to assess and prepare for overheating?
One in 10 landlords consider climate change to be a strategic risk to their operations, according to Inside Housing research, while 38% name net zero carbon, sustainability or environmental commitments as a key concern in their 2024-25 annual reports and financial statements.
WHG used to have a section titled ‘climate change risk’ in its annual report. Last year, it changed the heading to specifically focus on severe flooding and overheating of assets. This followed a climate hazard screening assessment of its portfolio by the environmental consultancy Waterman.
This research was informed by Arup’s 2022 report, Addressing overheating risk in existing UK homes, commissioned by the Climate Change Committee. This report found half of UK homes “suffer from overheating risk” under current weather conditions. The study projected that if temperatures are 2°C warmer in 2080, around 90% of existing homes will overheat. If global warming hits 4°C, all would face “overheating risks”.
WHG’s climate hazard screening “gives us a really good line of sight to where we need to go and do further investigation”, Ms Shields says. “So we’re not at the point where we can say that specific property in that specific street is going to overheat. What we can do is understand that this risk is going to be real for us and that we need to put in place measures to manage that.”
To determine what mitigation or adaptation might be needed, a second phase of screening will look at the high-risk areas identified. This is where regional collaboration between landlords could be key, suggests Ms Shields.
WHG is a member of the West Midlands Regional Adaptation Network created by the West Midlands Combined Authority. “That’s been really useful because with overheating, it is pretty much across the country,” she adds. “The heat increase will be the same, so therefore our plans to mitigate will be the same.”
Earlier this year, WHG launched a pilot of environmental sensor monitoring at 100 of its homes, the outcome of which will determine how it might use such equipment going forward. Places for People already has 600 Switchee smart thermostats and around 1,000 ZapCarbon sensors measuring temperature, humidity and ventilation in homes. These send alerts to the association’s asset intelligence team when the temperature falls below 17°C or above 32°C for more than two hours in a week.
Thomas Fountain, director of asset knowledge and insight at Places for People, says the landlord needs to work hard to understand its assets – which include 262,000 homes. But, he adds: “I would argue more importantly than that it’s about knowing our customers and understanding the risk profile of our customers.”
The association has installed around 3,500 Alertacall touchscreen devices, targeted towards older customers, which ask residents every day about their well-being. It is working with Alertacall to link up a resident’s environmental sensor to the touchscreen so the resident can receive prompts to check whether they need help managing the conditions inside their home.
Places for People also flags in its annual report that extreme warm temperatures may lead to “increased costs to install and run air conditioning systems”, business disruption due to overheating impacting its supply chain and transportation, and damage to property.
Claire Bailey, head of asset sustainability and innovation at Places for People, says the organisation is keen to test new products to address overheating. “But then the other bit is that customer journey piece, to make sure people have the access to the information resources that they need to be able to be safe and comfortable in their own homes,” she says.
Peabody’s heat-reflecting trial
Peabody is testing the application of a clear window coating, which reflects heat to prevent overheating, as a cheaper, less intrusive alternative to replacing windows. The trial is across eight different types and ages of blocks, including offices and care and support schemes.
The results to date indicate internal temperatures in rooms with coated windows were 2.6°C cooler on average last summer than those without the coating. By contrast, rooms with coated windows retained heat better during autumn 2025, being around 4-4.6°C warmer on average than those without. In both seasons, the temperature gap exceeded 5°C at some points.
Sensors also calculate infrared and ultraviolet radiation. At Arne Court supported housing in Basildon, Essex, the existing window glazing provided a 53% reduction in infrared radiation without the coating compared with a 95% reduction with it, says Richard Ellis, director of sustainability at 109,000-home landlord Peabody. The coating increased the reduction in ultraviolet radiation from 55% to 99%.
“So that enables us to then reduce down solar gain, which enables us to keep it cooler,” Mr Ellis says.
Another Peabody scheme, Macfarlane Place, completed in 2024 as part of the former BBC Television Centre development in west London, features external shutters that allow residents to control how much sunlight to let into their apartments. Mr Ellis says the association looks at constructing a new building in such a way that it “passively keeps itself cool as much as possible”.
In a sign of how quickly the climate has changed, he says that “when it was really hot a couple of years ago”, BedZED, a zero-carbon scheme Peabody completed in south London in 2002, “was overheating”.
Mr Ellis says the UK needs to “get used to having hot weather” and learn from the rest of Europe about how to deal with it. “There are opportunities… where we can use open spaces and nature to cool down our buildings,” he says. “It’s not only shutters or curtains or blinds. We can use trees.”
Aside from climate change, there is a legal and regulatory compliance risk for landlords in relation to overheating.
In October, the government will extend Awaab’s Law to include excess heat, among other hazards. Last December, Inside Housing reported that the solicitor for a resident of a Southwark Council flat in south London flagged an emergency hazard under Awaab’s Law due to excessive heat. The internal temperature in the flat, without heating on, was 27°C on the night of 6-7 November, according to the solicitor. The flat was completed in 2023.
Midland Heart is using the annual desktop assessment of its overheating risk by the environmental consultancy SHIFT to support its planning for the second phase of Awaab’s Law, as well as the Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard, according to a statement from the 35,000-home association. A spokesperson said no one was available for interview.
“There are opportunities where we can use open spaces and nature to cool down our buildings. It’s not only shutters or curtains or blinds”
The association takes “practical steps to manage overheating” in its homes, according to the statement, which gave a list of examples including mechanical ventilation in kitchens and bathrooms and assessments of overheating in new builds.
When SHIFT analysed Midland Heart’s properties, the consultancy found 12% were at “medium to high” risk of overheating, according to the association’s 2024-25 financial statements. Medium risk means three or four of six risk factors are present, says Richard Lupo, managing director of SHIFT; high means five or six.
Risk factors, according to SHIFT, include whether a home was built post-2000; whether it is a flat (because there is less opportunity for ventilation); whether it is in an urban heat island; whether cross-ventilation is possible; and whether there is a communal heating system.
Mr Lupo says homes built since 2000 have high levels of insulation, but overheating regulations were “quite flawed” until changes were introduced in 2022. He adds that he has heard anecdotally from the consultancy’s clients of residents lodging disrepair claims because internal pipework from communal heating systems was making their homes too hot.
Ms Shields from WHG says Awaab’s Law will help people in roles like hers “elevate” the attention the sector pays to the risk of overheating. “Because, of course, generally when in a very regulated organisation and sector, as we are, it’s challenging to get anything done if it’s not mandated, compulsory, legislated or regulated,” she says.
“Nobody wants to be in a position where we’re seeing our customers suffer because of overheating, but if we are mandated to evidence how we’re reporting on it or what we’re doing about it, that can only help us drive it forward as a priority.”
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