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The practical consequence is that you cannot wait for the complaints to arrive in June and then triage them. By the time the reports do come in, the clock is already ticking, and the evidence is becoming quickly outdated as extreme weather begins. Understanding which parts of your stock overheat, and which residents are exposed to it, is work that must happen before the weather does it for you.
The wrong answer and the right one
It is reasonable to think that the quickest response to this is to install cooling measures, but it is also the most expensive one. Typically, this lands the cost on the resident rather than the landlord. Citizens Advice documented a housing association tenant who went £ 40 into electricity debt in a single month running a portable unit, and who was more worried about the bills from the permanent units her landlord had promised than she was relieved by them. Bolting active cooling onto a poorly performing building layers a running cost problem on top of an efficiency problem and adds demand to an electricity network we are already asking to absorb the transition away from gas.
The evidence for the alternative option is in the Warm Homes Plan itself. A case study referenced within the document describes how a monitored flat in Camden, single aspect with no cross ventilation, reached 47.5 degrees in the bedroom when it was 28 degrees outside. External shading combined with night-time ventilation removed the overheating risk entirely and brought indoor temperatures down by 11 to 18 degrees. Internal blinds on their own achieved nine to 13 degrees, roughly three quarters of the benefit of external.
However, this is not an argument against cooling technology, for example, air-to-air heat pumps now attract a £ 2500 grant under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme( BUS), and they heat as well as cool, making them a sensible part of the answer. But it is imperative to get the sequencing right, getting the fabric and shading right first and any active cooling you then install works harder for less money.
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