Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will (a) instruct all resilience forums to establish a plan for tackling extreme heat, including checks on vulnerable residents and cool rest facilities, and (b) publish guidance his Department has issued on this prior to the period of extreme heat in July 2022.

This instruction should, and does, come from the Department for Health and Social Care as the lead department on the Heatwave Plan for England (through the UKHSA) rather than the Cabinet Office. As part of this, their officials and ministers liaise with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Local Communities to share policy guidance for Local Resilience Forums.

UKHSA’s Heatwave Plan for England contains the following:

• “The plan focuses on the effects of severe hot weather on health and well-being, however, severe and extended heatwaves can also cause severe disruption to general services. For this reason, multi-agency Local Health Resilience Partnerships (LHRPs) and Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) will have a critical role in preparing and responding to heatwaves at a local level, working closely with Health and Wellbeing Boards on longer term strategic planning.

• At local level, emergency planning arrangements run by local government and the NHS are brought together in the Local Resilience Forum (LRF), which have many years of experience with heatwave plans and heat-health alert system. LHRPs have been established to bring together the local health sector organisations to support in strategic planning.

• Health Services and local authority commissioners, together with multi-agency LRFs, should satisfy themselves that providers and stakeholders take appropriate actions according to the heat-health alert levels.”

The Heatwave Plan for England also contains resources that provide guidance, recommendations and advice for the public and professionals. Given the health threat and the impacts observed in summer 2021 additional work has been taken forward by UKHSA and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to raise awareness of the health consequences of hot weather and enable professionals, organisations and individuals to plan, mitigate and respond to hot weather episodes effectively. These include:

• Updating the materials related to hot weather risks on the Heatwave Plan for England collection page. These provide sector specific guidance on actions to take during a heatwave to safeguard patients and service users.

• Publishing the 2022 Heatwave communications toolkit and social media assets which have been shared with UKHSA regional communications, cross-government partners and local government to support consistent and clear messaging on heat-health.

Coordinating all of the previously circulated guidance will pose a disproportionate cost.