On 15 July 2026 the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Town and Country Planning Association laid bare the uncomfortable reality facing new housing and public buildings across England. Their analysis of more than 700 local plan documents showed that just over half of emerging plans set any policy requirement for cooling or ventilation strategies to manage overheating. Nearly half do not.
This matters because extreme heat is no longer a distant prospect. Research published in July 2026 recorded around 2700 excess deaths during the heatwaves of May and June alone. The elderly, the very young and those in care homes or hospitals sit at greatest risk. Yet the planning system that is supposed to protect them remains half-formed.
The report, produced with an experimental artificial intelligence tool developed by Landstack, examined 327 adopted and 148 emerging local plans after rigorous data cleansing. Its authors acknowledged the methodology was novel and might contain some inaccuracies. They maintained, however, that it delivered a broadly reliable picture of current practice. That picture is one of ambition outstripping delivery.
Stated goals versus actual safeguards
Ninety-three per cent of emerging local plans and 86 per cent of adopted ones list climate change as a strategic objective. Less than half of adopted plans and 72 per cent of emerging ones contain a strategic policy on the subject. Only 11 per cent of adopted plans and 28 per cent of emerging plans were informed by a climate vulnerability assessment. Carbon assessments appear in just 2 per cent and 7 per cent respectively.
These figures accumulate into a quiet indictment. Local authorities speak of resilience while the detailed policies needed to achieve it remain patchy at best. The gap between rhetoric and regulatory muscle is now measurable in the number of buildings that could become uninhabitable during future heatwaves.
Celia Davis, senior projects and policy manager at the RTPI and interim director of operations at the TCPA, put the stakes plainly. "This is a matter of life and death. We need to avoid building death traps."
