Plus: Boris Johnson's mystery plan for a second cable car • TfL hackers plead guilty • Brixton Market community bid submitted • It's really, really hot
I really cannot stress enough how hot some schools get. That DfE comment is enraging, because even if it’s true children aren’t affected by studying in 40ºC with no AC and buildings built to trap heat (???), what about the staff? I left teaching in 2024, ours was a modern school, my classroom in heatwave days felt like a sauna - try controlling a room of teens in that, let alone teach them anything good! And I’m no stranger to these temperatures, either, but the UK is not built for them and it makes it 100x worse. Unfortunately it feels like it will take a child or teacher dying from heat-related illness for the DfE to take this seriously.
This is an issue that should have been tackled long ago, and urgently, after Covid, when ventilation was found to be a powerful protective against viral transmission.
As a former Headteacher I know how vital this is, as well as how vital it to keep children cool for their health and so that they can learn, but the money is never there. In the past we brought fans in from home knowing that because some official hadn’t been in to check we would be in deep trouble if discovered. Usually the intense heat strikes at the end of the summer term and on many occasions teachers got watering cans out and watered the children’s feet to try to cool them down. Now the scorching conditions are, and will become, more frequent.
It’s about time the DfE tried working in a hot classroom with thirty five sweating children and see how they like it.
I don’t live in London anymore but even so I absolutely love to know what’s going on in a city I used to love. Still love it on touristy day and its attractions span the generations. Only last week, one of my very young grandchildren travelled far to attend her very first pop concert. She told her mum it had been “the best night of my life” - - so far 🤩
Thank you London Centric for your stellar journalism.
I’d be interested to know how many London community centres have air conditioning. I bet not a lot. Retrofitting all our public housing stock with cooling measures is going to be very slow and in the meantime we are really lacking in free cool spaces for the elderly and vulnerable to shelter near their homes.
It's time to take an aggressive stance on all the media celebs and columnists who still waffle on about climate change "hoax" and moan about Net Zero. I just saw today that Manhattan will need flood protection because ... sea levels are rising. Some hoax that!
Manhattan will never get the protection it needs because the local and state politicians asking for help are Democrats and the leaders in Washington with the means and money to help them are Republicans who owe them nothing since they would never get elected in Manhattan anyway. Besides planning any kind of big civic engineering job in NYC makes HS2 look like a model of efficiency. That’s why there hasn’t been a new subway line since 1946.
Back in the 1990s when temperatures reached 25 degrees the London primary school I worked in (built 1912/13) was impossible for everyone! There was some shade but not enough. Air conditioning was needed then. It must be impossible to lift a pencil (remember them?!) now. And as for the uniforms!
I have recently realised that the reason I wake up every night at 3am is less to do with perimenopause and more to do with my upstairs neighbour moving around. Ear plugs have solved that problem. But at 3 this morning I was woken up by something that reminded me of when a man drove into my house at 2:45 a couple of months ago (fortunately only the fence and one of the bins were damaged/destroyed). Even with ear plugs in, that storm was LOUD.
After the hell that was the commute this morning, yeah, I give up. London transport after a couple of drops: stopped because of flodding. London in the same morning: mitigations will keep normal schedule from running so overground trains are more packed (while signal failures everywhere else in my way). Perfect, 10/10.
“It was common that four or five people from my old college would be in Greenwich in a house together. I just don’t think they could do that now, could they?”: What do they do now? I thought that was the typical 20-something housing experience.
I work for a school in Lambeth. All our after school clubs and trips have been cancelled, portable air con units have been ordered and we've been warned that we may have to close early this week.
Meanwhile the school my kids go to is still running pretty much as usual…
Accuweather reports a high of 31 for Lambeth on Fri this week, with today and Weds at 30 and Thurs at 28.
Yes this is warm but hardly out of the bounds of a normal summer heatwave. It's certainly not hot enough for the current tone of panic I see in the media and online comments.
And it's certainly not hot enough to be shutting schools down with all the disruption that implies.
Re "2nd Cable car" story...what is happening re Crossrail 2? According to Wikipedia, it was suspended in Covid times... maybe time to quiz the PM in waiting about it? (& re instating HS2 to Manchester - or, preferablby building HS capacity on the East Coast Mainline ?) - so much better value than the Lower Thames crossing(still cancellable!!)
"I always answer unknown numbers on my mobile phone because, when I worked for Boris, he didn’t know how to put the number into the phone. It always came up as ‘unknown number’"
This doesn't make any sense does it. If that happened it would be because Hendy didn't have the number in his contacts, and he then goes on to talk about a call from the No.10 switchboard, which obviously didn't originate from Johnson's personal mobile phone.
Temperatures like that are common in summer in Australia but we do have air conditioning or most do. Certain businesses have rules in place for cutting work outdoors when reaches 38C. Children are in air conditioned classrooms but even it can struggle in 40C heat.
Temperatures like that are common in summer in Australia but we do have air conditioning or most do. Certain businesses have rules in place for cutting work outdoors when reaches 38C. Children are in air conditioned classrooms but even it can struggle in 40C heat.
The Department for Education might want to look across the Channel — where the French Education Nationale (sadly) increasingly makes important decisions to mitigate the heat — no doubt they would not be doing that if there was no impact on students. In 2019, the Brevet (equivalent of the GCSEs) was pushed back by a few days because of the heatwave, for instance.
I really cannot stress enough how hot some schools get. That DfE comment is enraging, because even if it’s true children aren’t affected by studying in 40ºC with no AC and buildings built to trap heat (???), what about the staff? I left teaching in 2024, ours was a modern school, my classroom in heatwave days felt like a sauna - try controlling a room of teens in that, let alone teach them anything good! And I’m no stranger to these temperatures, either, but the UK is not built for them and it makes it 100x worse. Unfortunately it feels like it will take a child or teacher dying from heat-related illness for the DfE to take this seriously.
This is an issue that should have been tackled long ago, and urgently, after Covid, when ventilation was found to be a powerful protective against viral transmission.
As a former Headteacher I know how vital this is, as well as how vital it to keep children cool for their health and so that they can learn, but the money is never there. In the past we brought fans in from home knowing that because some official hadn’t been in to check we would be in deep trouble if discovered. Usually the intense heat strikes at the end of the summer term and on many occasions teachers got watering cans out and watered the children’s feet to try to cool them down. Now the scorching conditions are, and will become, more frequent.
It’s about time the DfE tried working in a hot classroom with thirty five sweating children and see how they like it.
I don’t live in London anymore but even so I absolutely love to know what’s going on in a city I used to love. Still love it on touristy day and its attractions span the generations. Only last week, one of my very young grandchildren travelled far to attend her very first pop concert. She told her mum it had been “the best night of my life” - - so far 🤩
Thank you London Centric for your stellar journalism.
I’d be interested to know how many London community centres have air conditioning. I bet not a lot. Retrofitting all our public housing stock with cooling measures is going to be very slow and in the meantime we are really lacking in free cool spaces for the elderly and vulnerable to shelter near their homes.
It's time to take an aggressive stance on all the media celebs and columnists who still waffle on about climate change "hoax" and moan about Net Zero. I just saw today that Manhattan will need flood protection because ... sea levels are rising. Some hoax that!
Manhattan will never get the protection it needs because the local and state politicians asking for help are Democrats and the leaders in Washington with the means and money to help them are Republicans who owe them nothing since they would never get elected in Manhattan anyway. Besides planning any kind of big civic engineering job in NYC makes HS2 look like a model of efficiency. That’s why there hasn’t been a new subway line since 1946.
It will become a swamp! I don't care.
Nobody does.
Back in the 1990s when temperatures reached 25 degrees the London primary school I worked in (built 1912/13) was impossible for everyone! There was some shade but not enough. Air conditioning was needed then. It must be impossible to lift a pencil (remember them?!) now. And as for the uniforms!
I have recently realised that the reason I wake up every night at 3am is less to do with perimenopause and more to do with my upstairs neighbour moving around. Ear plugs have solved that problem. But at 3 this morning I was woken up by something that reminded me of when a man drove into my house at 2:45 a couple of months ago (fortunately only the fence and one of the bins were damaged/destroyed). Even with ear plugs in, that storm was LOUD.
After the hell that was the commute this morning, yeah, I give up. London transport after a couple of drops: stopped because of flodding. London in the same morning: mitigations will keep normal schedule from running so overground trains are more packed (while signal failures everywhere else in my way). Perfect, 10/10.
I've heard stories of parents crowd sourcing the fans themselves for their primary school to make it more bearable for the kids and teachers.
Shade the UK have made a really cool guide on improvements you can make to your house to manage against heat -- also comes with suggestions on adaptations renters can make https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f479ec7e8691c46c4ef7417/t/66e2fac1e6d4bf18dc3abaa5/1726151371011/Overheating_Adaptation_Guide_For_Homes_STUK_BRC.pdf
“It was common that four or five people from my old college would be in Greenwich in a house together. I just don’t think they could do that now, could they?”: What do they do now? I thought that was the typical 20-something housing experience.
I think he meant that Greenwich is too expensive even for house shares now?
I work for a school in Lambeth. All our after school clubs and trips have been cancelled, portable air con units have been ordered and we've been warned that we may have to close early this week.
Meanwhile the school my kids go to is still running pretty much as usual…
Accuweather reports a high of 31 for Lambeth on Fri this week, with today and Weds at 30 and Thurs at 28.
Yes this is warm but hardly out of the bounds of a normal summer heatwave. It's certainly not hot enough for the current tone of panic I see in the media and online comments.
And it's certainly not hot enough to be shutting schools down with all the disruption that implies.
Met Office predicts a high of 36: https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/forecast/gcpuvmf5z#?date=2026-06-26
Re "2nd Cable car" story...what is happening re Crossrail 2? According to Wikipedia, it was suspended in Covid times... maybe time to quiz the PM in waiting about it? (& re instating HS2 to Manchester - or, preferablby building HS capacity on the East Coast Mainline ?) - so much better value than the Lower Thames crossing(still cancellable!!)
"I always answer unknown numbers on my mobile phone because, when I worked for Boris, he didn’t know how to put the number into the phone. It always came up as ‘unknown number’"
This doesn't make any sense does it. If that happened it would be because Hendy didn't have the number in his contacts, and he then goes on to talk about a call from the No.10 switchboard, which obviously didn't originate from Johnson's personal mobile phone.
Temperatures like that are common in summer in Australia but we do have air conditioning or most do. Certain businesses have rules in place for cutting work outdoors when reaches 38C. Children are in air conditioned classrooms but even it can struggle in 40C heat.
Temperatures like that are common in summer in Australia but we do have air conditioning or most do. Certain businesses have rules in place for cutting work outdoors when reaches 38C. Children are in air conditioned classrooms but even it can struggle in 40C heat.
The Department for Education might want to look across the Channel — where the French Education Nationale (sadly) increasingly makes important decisions to mitigate the heat — no doubt they would not be doing that if there was no impact on students. In 2019, the Brevet (equivalent of the GCSEs) was pushed back by a few days because of the heatwave, for instance.