5 things we’ve learnt about people’s experiences of heatwaves
In 2022 the UK recorded temperatures in excess of 40°C. With wide-ranging consequences the extreme heat caused wildfires, high levels of demands on the NHS and disruption to utility services and national infrastructure.
In recent years, heatwaves have emerged as a new challenge for emergency preparedness and response in the UK. 2022 was the first time the UK officially declared a state of emergency caused by extreme heat. A report from the London School of Economics highlights how much work must be done to ensure the UK is appropriately prepared for and able to respond to the risks related to extreme heat:
“There is currently insufficient research, policy or action to ensure that communities, businesses and systems are prepared for this risk and can adequately respond to it and recover from its impacts.”
What the Red Cross does during heatwaves
Our dedicated volunteers and staff at British Red Cross support people to prepare for, respond to and recover from different emergencies and crises. Last year was the first year our teams responded to heatwaves. Over the summer period teams supported people in London who lost their homes due to fires caused by barbeques on dry grass. They provided invaluable support to fire crews who had been tackling wildfires for days in Norfolk, ensuring their needs were being met so they could focus on continuing to tackle the blaze. They provided practical and welfare support to people in Yorkshire when a large water pipe burst, cutting off the supply of water to a whole village.
Our research
As heatwaves become an emergency we increasingly expect to see in the UK there is more academic and policy research being developed. This work is about improving our collective understanding of future risks and how to communicate those risks, evaluating previous responses and assessing national and local capabilities that build resilience around heatwaves.
Our focus is slightly different. We are focusing on understanding people’s experiences of the heatwaves. Our goal is to identify practical things the Red Cross can do to better meet people’s needs during heatwaves. We call this work the discovery phase. It involves looking at things like if and how people planned, what they did during the heatwaves, any support they needed, if and where they looked for support, what they received and any unmet needs.
The way we start to answer these questions is by talking to people who experienced heatwaves. There are certain groups known to be disproportionately at risk during heatwaves, including: older people, pregnant people, children and people with existing medical conditions. We prioritised speaking to people who were part of one or more of these groups with the exception of children where instead we spoke to parents. So far we have interviewed 18 people from Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Plymouth and Redruth.
Gaining first hand insight by talking to people with lived experience is really important for our team.
- It helps build empathy by humanising people’s experiences beyond service data or aggregated feedback. Directly hearing and seeing the challenges people is how we become truly user led. It helps us to design better solutions by putting their experience at the centre of our thinking.
- It goes beyond a surface level of feedback, by giving you the opportunity to discuss why. Why people did something a certain way, liked or didn’t like a service, asked for help or didn’t, and so on. Understanding the reasons and motivations behind what happened or how someone felt helps us design for how people actually act and behave, not how we think they should.
- It uncovers unarticulated needs. People may have needs or wants that they are not consciously aware of or are unable to express through surveys or other indirect methods. Speaking directly with people can help to uncover these needs.
We’ve shared more about how the discovery phase works at British Red Cross in this blog post from a previous project.
Five things we learnt about people’s experiences of heatwaves
People don’t see heatwaves as a pressing issue
In recounting their experiences of the heatwaves last year, some people found it a positive experience.
“I enjoyed the hot weather. I didn’t think of it as a pain or a disruption”
Whilst most people didn’t speak about the heatwaves in quite such a positive way, at worst they were framed as an inconvenience and something uncomfortable rather than being seen necessarily as an emergency.
“We have not been restricted by the heat”
“You just have to get on with it”
“The hot weather has been terrible. I find it really uncomfortable sleeping, even with a fan. My feet swell in the heat”
For some people, this impacted whether they felt they could ask for help during a heatwave.
“Would I ask an organisation to help because the weather is hot? No, I wouldn’t”
Perceptions of risk
We set out to understand people’s personal experiences of heatwaves and this is what our questions focused on. Despite that, in many of our interviews, people began talking about family members, neighbours and friends. They shared their concerns and the actions they had taken to help protect others during the extreme heat.
“I bought suncream for my daughter to put on her kids. She was a teenage Mum so she needed that help. I worry about others who don’t get that help”
“There are people on their own and they need help [advice and checking in on them]. We’ve got a few elderly neighbours and we all look in on them”
We know some groups are at greater risk during heatwaves so there is some sense in this. However, the difference in perceptions of risk was particularly interesting. People’s perception of their own risk is significantly lower or non-existent related to relatives or those who are more vulnerable.
People rely on networks and groups they’re already a part of for support
From our interviews, we saw a pattern in terms of the order in which people look for support. If people weren’t able to get what they needed at the first level(s) they would progress through the list. The pattern goes like this:
- People will support themselves
- People will get support from family and friends
- People will get support from groups and services they are already connected to
- People will try and get support from services they haven’t used before
Choice and agency
We heard how people adapted their routines during the heatwaves. Choosing to drive rather than take a stuffy, unventilated train or bus. Choosing to alter their working hours or work location. Choosing to generally do things a bit slower.
But not everyone had the choice and agency to do this or changing their routines came with consequences. One person spoke about having to reduce their taxi driving hours down to 2–3 hours per day because it was just too hot to get out. Another person had to rely on a bus that was too hot or face a walk up a steep hill, highlighting that his disability makes that an exhausting task in normal conditions, let alone in a heatwave. For some people, the extreme weather meant not making or attending appointments because getting there became too difficult.
Trust in alerts
The stereotype of people in the UK being obsessed with the weather held strong. Most people checked the weather via the BBC or the Met Office.
“[The Met Office is] one of my most frequented websites”
“My family say I’m obsessed with checking the weather”
A lot of people we spoke to received weather alerts as well as checking the weather for practical reasons like deciding how to dress or whether to pack a brolly. For a lot of people, the weather alerts had almost a ‘boy who cried wolf’ reputation. Because of the frequency of alerts and the fact often nothing comes of it, people generally don’t act in a different way when they receive them.
“I’ve got a yellow warning now…I pay no attention to it”
Next steps
We’ll be talking to organisations that provided support to people during the heatwaves last year, like local councils and community groups. As the work progresses we’ll be sharing what we’re doing and learning on this blog.
