‘Overheating is the Most Overlooked Building Safety Issue,’ Says BESA

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• ‘Overheating is the Most Overlooked Building Safety Issue,’ Says BESA

19 August 2025

As deaths due to excess heat increase, the Building Engineering Services Association is calling for more concerted efforts to adapt the built environment’s resilience to heatwaves.

Research led by Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine suggests that climate change was responsible for 171 of the estimated excess heat deaths in London during the June 23 to July 2 heatwave.

Environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth identified almost 5,000 neighbourhoods in England that now regularly suffer from heat stress. These areas cover about a third of the country and contain more than 1,000 hospitals, 10,000 children’s nurseries, and a similar number of care homes.

“The role of cooling needs to receive a similar level of scrutiny to ensure it can play its part in keeping building occupants safe and healthy,” said the Building Engineering Services Association’s (BESA) Technical Director, Kevin Morrissey.

“Overheating is the most overlooked building safety issue. Improving insulation to reduce heat loss and protect occupants from fire is extremely important, but in many cases, this is exacerbating growing health problems caused by poor indoor air quality (IAQ) and condensation by raising temperature and humidity and reducing air change rates.

“2022 might have seen more dramatic temperature peaks but this year seems to mark a move into much longer and more relentless periods of heat stress. This is significant because it suggests we are experiencing a new long-term weather pattern which calls for a more concerted effort to adapt our built environment.

“There are multiple technical solutions available, including both passive and mechanical cooling systems. However, to ensure these reach the most vulnerable in our society cooling must now become a central part of the UK’s push to decarbonise the built environment, which continues to focus primarily on how we heat buildings.

Picture: a graphic showing a person standing next to a desktop fan, with their arms around the base of the fan. The graphic is in a cartoon style. Image Credit: Pixabay

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 19 August 2025

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