Photo by Rajiv Bajaj on Unsplash

By Paul Atkin

Mad dogs and Englishmen, go out in the mid-day sun

Noel Coward.

The heatwaves in May and June have so far caused 2,700 excess deaths. There are likely to be more before Summer is out. 

And with the current El Nino giving a violent upward spike to the underlying heat accumulation being steadily built by greenhouse gases, we can expect worse next year. And worse the year after that. This is what climate change is.

To put the deadly consequences into perspective, 2,700 excess deaths is 

• more than five times the number of people murdered in the year ending March 2025; which was 522.
• almost double the road accident total for 2025; which was 1,556 
• and three quarters as many as the total deaths during the thirty years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1998; which was 3,489.

Some of the people who died will have read articles in the press playing down the severity of the heatwaves – claiming that Red and Amber heat warnings are not a sober health warning, but just another symptom of a society that no longer has what it takes even to get through “gorgeous weather” – believed them, and acted accordingly.

The TUC supports a maximum workplace temperature. 

Giving Hannah Spencer’s maximum workplace temperature bill government time to make sure it doesn’t get talked out, would be a good way for Andy Burnham to show he is serious about improving people’s lives. 

The bill, if passed, would create an independent body to recommend maximum safe workplace temperatures and set out how the recommendations should be implemented. 

In the coming months, while pressing for this legislation, we will have to struggle with unbearably hot workplaces, often with managers in air conditioned offices playing it down. 

• In August, UNISON is making heat its theme of the month for its Year of Green Action
• The TUC is hosting a heatwave organising call at 1pm on Wednesday 29 July, to share advice on how to keep your workplace cool — with actions you can take to win protections now and build towards a national maximum temperature.
• There’s a lot of useful resources on the Heat Strike site.  

This graph from the Met Office shows the trend and points to where we are heading. When Eurostar puts out a spec for a train capable of running in 55C heat, do they consider whether their crew and passengers would be able to get to or from the train if it was that hot outside?