Why London homes don't have air con

Plus: Lego asks the London Conservatives to stop using their yellow bricks to mock Sadiq Khan — and do you want to live in a former aircraft factory in Zone 3?

There was an enormous reaction to John Bull’s piece on Wednesday about how London came back to life in the immediate aftermath of the 7/7 attacks. While it’s worth checking out the main story if you missed it, we also really recommend the comments section with Londoners sharing reminiscences about that day and how the city came together in adversity.

More presently, you may have noticed that London is very, very hot again. There’s currently an amber heat-health warning in place across the capital, meaning exposure to the ongoing temperatures can result in “serious health outcomes”.

Today we’re looking at a question that has been on the minds of many Londoners for the past month: why don’t the capital’s homes have air conditioning? A growing number of people believe it can be installed in the capital’s domestic properties in an environmentally-friendly, life-saving way.

Reading this may just change your life – or at least your attitude to London summers. Then scroll to the end for a selection of other stories.

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“It’s mystifying that Britain hasn’t gone down this route”: Should London get air conditioning?

If you’re battling through the latest London heatwave, dreaming of the domestic air conditioning enjoyed in many other wealthy countries, it’s worth knowing that your struggle is official government and mayoral policy.

“Air conditioning has been pretty much actively discouraged by the UK government until now,” Andrew Sissons of innovation charity Nesta, told London Centric.

Research by the government in 2021 estimated there were only around 10,000 permanent domestic air conditioning units in the whole of the UK. That said, an increasingly common sight across London is of blocks of flats with tell-tale white plastic hoses dangling out of windows in summer, as people rush to buy the portable versions.

A portable air conditioning unit doing its best to keep a modern London flat cool.

Here’s why (almost all) Londoners don’t have permanent air conditioning in their homes:

1. It’s effectively banned in new build houses and flats by planning rules.
   Builders have to show they have exhausted all practicable passive means of cooling a building, such as planting more trees for shade or increasing ventilation, before including so-called “mechanical cooling” in their designs. As a result only very high-end London developers bother to spend the money to include air conditioning units, which are also known as air-to-air heat pumps.
   
   The existing policy is backed by the mayor of London’s office. Last year the mayor’s London Climate Resilience Review again emphasised that ventilation should be prioritised over air conditioning.
   
   One of the effects of this policy is that new London flats are required to have a window on two sides of a building to enable air to flow through and remove heat naturally.
   
   Anthony Breach of the Centre of Cities think tank has argued that London homes could be built at a lower cost if this requirement, which limits the size of a block of flats, was scrapped. He told London Centric that air conditioning could encourage housebuilding and create a win-win situation: “The ‘passive cooling’ measures that are required not only struggle to keep homes cool during heatwaves, but as they are much more expensive than air conditioning they also reduce housebuilding.”

2. Planning restrictions on old homes mean it was a pain to install air conditioning — until six weeks ago.
   London has unusually old housing for a global city, with millions of people living in properties dating to the Victorian era and earlier. These buildings were not designed for increased temperatures caused by climate change.
   
   Most are still heated by gas boilers that pump hot water around radiators to keep people warm in winter. The government is providing massive subsidies to encourage people to replace these gas boilers with heat pumps. But until a few weeks ago if you wanted to install a heat pump that could both warm your home in winter and cool your house in summer (which is what many modern air conditioning units can do) you’d need to apply to the local council for planning permission. That rule was scrapped at the end of May.
   
   Sissons, who was previously chief economist at the Environment Agency, is now urging Londoners to consider whether they’d be better off ripping out their radiators and replacing everything with an air conditioning system: “In Scandinavia, which is the heat pump capital of Europe, they use air-to-air heat pumps. It’s mystifying that Britain hasn’t gone down this route, it’s really good technology and it’s really affordable. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more people heating and cooling their homes this way.”
   
   All of this raises the prospect of an unequal approach to future hot London summers. Homeowners who can afford to spend thousands of pounds installing air conditioning could end up enjoying a pleasant July and August, while people who rent or are short on cash will be forced to put up with the stress and health risks that come with excessive heat.
   

3. Environmental concerns and the cost of electricity.
   One of the longest standing public concerns about air conditioning has been the idea that it guzzles vast amounts of expensive, polluting, carbon-heavy electricity.
   

   This argument is used by the mayor’s office to explain why London-specific planning rules discourage air conditioning. Sadiq Khan’s spokesperson told London Centric that the mayor’s planning policies favour natural ventilation, such as air flowing through a building, because such measures “help to lower energy costs for households”.
   
   Yet the facts around this are changing fast, with the UK a world leader in green energy. Britain has already closed its final coal power station and faces the prospect of electricity prices collapsing in summer, when air conditioning demand is at its highest. Over the last week almost half of the UK’s electricity has come from renewable sources and it’s well worth looking at the live dashboard to see what’s powering your devices at the exact moment you’re reading this.
   
   The price of solar panels and home electricity storage batteries is falling almost every month, due to a glut of supply from China. Combined with the growing use of dynamic pricing (some electricity tariffs now pay people to use excess electricity when there’s too many wind farms online) there is the prospect of homes storing cheap, green electricity for air conditioning.
   

4. A previous lack of confidence that London’s electricity supply can cope with high demand for air conditioning.
   There’s no point installing air conditioning units in homes if people can’t access the electricity required to run them.
   
   ”There was a worry that if everyone gets air con the grid would collapse,” said Sissons. “[But] with more solar on hot days you’ve got quite a bit of extra capacity in the system.”
   
   He said the shift to electric vehicles and heat pumps, which will use electricity rather than gas to heat homes in winter, means the concern is no longer about summer days: “The worry, if you’re an electricity grid planner, is now all about the coldest day in winter.”

5. The vague sense that air conditioning is not culturally something London does.
   More than anything, according to everyone London Centric spoke to and official government research, there appears to be an ingrained cultural attitude that air conditioning in domestic homes is fundamentally an un-British thing to have. Instead, there seems a collective societal view that mad dogs and Englishmen are duty bound to sweat away in the midday sun.
   
   Part of this is because the summers really did used to be cooler, with the odd extremely hot day considered survivable with the help of a fan. But now the public are starting to realise that hot summers are here to stay.
   
   With increased awareness about the substantial health risks of excessive heat people are now weighing up whether the cost of installing air conditioning can be more easily justified if it’s needed for decades to come. Another theory, according to government research, is that Britons are now so used to air conditioning in cars, shops, and workplaces that they are more likely to desire it at home.
   
   Sissons argued it’s time for London to reconsider its attitude to air conditioning: “Fundamentally it’s an option which can tackle your heating in the winter in a clean and efficient way, and your cooling in the summer.”

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Exclusive: Lego takes on the London Conservatives

The London Conservatives’ mock-up of lego Sadiq Khan.

Lego asked the London Assembly’s Conservatives to remove a video mocking Sadiq Khan from its social media accounts, sources have told London Centric.

The City Hall Conservatives posted a now-deleted satirical advert for ‘the Sadiq Khan Lego City set’ on Wednesday, featuring the Danish toymaker’s logo and its distinctive blocky figures – including a miniature mayor. The video criticises the mayor’s restrictions on polluting cars, Transport for London’s response to vigilante Bakerloo line tube cleaners, and the lack of response to crime in the city. It also makes reference to the “BOSH” catchphrase of former Apprentice star Tom Skinner, mocks up a tweet of the lego mayor calling Robert Jenrick “fat”, and features real life footage of a man illegally attacking a ULEZ camera.

A mocked-up Sadiq Khan tweet from the London Assembly Conservatives.

The following day, Lego requested the post’s removal, a source in the Conservatives confirmed. An internal decision to pull the video had already been made shortly earlier, they added, declining to comment on the reason behind this. The issue comes amid internal Tory tensions over the direction of the London Conservatives, with the rising threat from Reform and the decision of Susan Hall, the leader of the eight-strong group, to join the advisory board of a new political organisation calling for mass deportations of legal immigrants.

Although it was removed from the official account, copies remain available online and the tactic suggests the next mayoral election is likely to be fought with a meme war of endless viral videos.

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Preposterous property of the week

Ever wanted to drive one of your eight cars directly into your seven bedroom home in a former aircraft factory in suburban north west London? Well you can now live the dream in Cricklewood for just £5.35m. The home, built in a factory once owned by aircraft manufacturer Handley Page, is located just off the Edgware Ware near Brent Cross shopping centre and comes complete with a professional-sized yoga studio. If that’s not enough space for your lifestyle then there’s potential to add another three bedrooms. The property doesn’t seem to be selling — so you might just be able to snap up a bargain, given it was originally put on the market at £6.5m back in 2021.

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Lime squeezed, Labour pumped up

The central Labour government has announced a new devolution bill. Here’s four quick things you need to know about how it affects London:

• The government is changing the mayoral voting system back to the “supplementary vote” system. This makes it far likelier Labour will win the next London mayoral election in 2028, when Sadiq Khan is widely expected to step down. The decision reverses a Conservative switch to the first past the post voting system in 2021, which was designed to give the Tories a better chance of winning.

• Demands by London local councils to share more power with the mayor, as first revealed in London Centric, have been overlooked by the government.

• The mayor will gain the power to regulate hire e-bikes such as Lime, enabling Transport for London to set rules on parking and other matters, such as whether riders should be covered by insurance if a potential bike malfunction leaves their leg bone shattered into pieces.

• Mayors in the rest of the country are getting powers that London has enjoyed for decades — while London is not getting most of the additional powers or funding it asked for. As Sadiq Khan told the capital’s corporate elite on Thursday, he believes London is being “overlooked” by the Labour government. “We can’t take London for granted and allow our city to be a victim of its own success,” he told the BusinessLDN summer drinks. “We can’t afford this government to be anti the capital city, like the last one.”