Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what lessons about strategic planning they have learnt from heatwaves in the last four years, in particular in relation to reservoirs, air conditioning in publicly owned buildings, public transport, and healthcare.

The recent heatwaves have served to reinforce the importance of strategic contingency planning and highlight the wide range of potential consequences. The Resilience Action Plan sets out the Government’s work to strengthen domestic resilience to all risks, including climate change. ‘Environmental’ is one of 26 chronic risks identified in the Government’s Chronic Risks Analysis.

Furthermore, the Government is taking action to ensure that public and private infrastructure operators can continue to deliver the essential services that underpin the economy and set the conditions for sustainable long-term growth in the face of increasingly severe climate impacts.

More broadly, under the Climate Change Act 2008, the Government has a legal framework for strengthening UK preparedness to climate change risks. This includes preparing a Climate Change Risk Assessment every five years, which is led by Defra, followed by a National Adaptation Programme setting out how the government will address the identified climate risks across a range of sectors including infrastructure.