How to fix our overheating hospitals and schools, according to experts

June’s record-breaking heat, which reached 37°C on Friday, has impacted every part of daily life, from education and healthcare to bin collections and trains.

Leaders and insiders across key sectors and services have raised questions about the UK’s ability to cope with the weather and renewed calls for urgent action to shore up the country’s climate resilience in future heatwaves.

Here’s how insiders told us how they’ve been affected by the extreme heat and what they need.

New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES). 

The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.

The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.

Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.

Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.

Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggering ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, ⁠with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.

Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.

Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.

Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

Doctors this week reported temperatures of up to 35°C on wards, making it hard for patients to recover and for staff to cope. Emergency call-outs surged, with the London Ambulance Service reporting a 50 per cent increase in life-threatening emergency calls on Wednesday alone.

Essential medical equipment has also been impacted by the heat, affecting patient care. At Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals, cooling systems in MRI scanners failed on Wednesday due to the extreme heat. A critical incident was declared and hundreds of appointments were cancelled.

Linear accelerator machines used to treat cancer stopped working due to the heat at one unnamed hospital, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) said.

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals said it had “taken steps to modify the cooling systems within the MRI scanner environments” that will help ensure this type and scale of incident doesn’t happen again during such hot and humid weather.

But the RCP warned that the NHS “must be equipped to meet” the reality of more frequent episodes of extreme heat.

Dr Mark Harber, RCP special adviser on healthcare sustainability and climate change, said: “Quick fixes are not enough: fans are not always a safe option in clinical environments where infection control is essential.

“What is needed is sustained investment in the NHS estate. This includes practical steps like improving ventilation and installing safe, clinically appropriate cooling systems, retrofitting solar shading, reflective roofing and better insulation, and ensuring that all new hospital builds meet clear standards for climate resilience.”

Over a thousand schools across England and Wales closed completely or partially due to the heatwave.

Many nurseries also shut, with the closures having had a knock-on effect on workers with children.

Oasis, which runs 10 schools in Bristol, was forced to close all of them – even one that was fully air conditioned because its teachers were unable to work due to their own children at different schools being at home, or because of transport issues.

The decisions to close schools and nurseries were made by the institutions, as there is no official legislation or guidance on the maximum temperatures for schools.

The Department for Education currently does not typically advise schools to close for hot weather, but has said it was considering recommendations to change the current policy.

Steve Chalke, founder and CEO of Oasis, said schools that stayed open had implemented immediate measures such as closing blinds, adapting lessons, advising children to wear PE kits instead of standard uniform, and providing water and fans.

He called for official, practical advice on how schools can stay open during the sweltering heat.

“There could be another [heatwave] even before the end of this term,” he said. “We need good guidance from the Department for Education about what to do and what not to do.”

Some of these solutions may have to be drastic, he suggested.

“Every school in the end has got to be equipped with AC,” he said. And because hot weather “is going to increase… maybe you move the summer holidays earlier” so that schools are guaranteed to be closed during the hot weather.

Train passengers were urged not to travel across much of England unless absolutely necessary and dozens of train services were cancelled across the country due to the heatwave this week.

Trains have to travel more slowly to avoid damaging the lines, Network Rail said, with these speed restrictions contributing to widespread delays, disruption and reduced services.

Temperatures on some London Underground lines surpassed the record-breaking heat above ground, with the Evening Standard finding temperatures exceeded 39°C on the Central line.

The i Paper understands Transport for London is looking at how cooling solutions can be rolled out more widely across the network. With air conditioning covering just 40 per cent of trains on the Tube network, speeding up its installation of the cooling tech will likely be a priority.

On the roads, breakdown firms reported surges in call-outs and warned of longer response times.

Meanwhile, Unite has called for a permanent solution to the extreme temperatures that bus drivers can experience, and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said that they do not have to drive if the cabin is too hot.

“Cab temperatures can often exceed 40°C, as glass windows trap heat and create a ‘greenhouse’ effect,” the union said.

Councils around the country adjusted waste collections schedules, postponing recycling and garden waste collections and having some crews start as early as 4am in some areas so they can operate when it’s cooler. In some cases, it has meant the waste went uncollected.

Councillor Jo Blackman, cabinet member for environment and neighbourhoods at Redbridge Council, said crews not only started earlier this week, but were also regularly monitored throughout the day.

“Air temperature, humidity, wind, and solar radiation are monitored to establish ‘heat categories’ and these, alongside crew feedback which is collected every half an hour, inform operational decision making,” Blackman said. “If temperatures are already approaching or exceeding around 32°C (it is a judgement call) at that stage, a decision is made to stand crews down and return them to base.”

The councillor added that additional funding from the central Government would undoubtedly support service resilience.

Older people are among the most vulnerable to the health risks associated with extreme heat.

The UK Health Security Agency, which has issued amber heat health alerts until 9am Sunday, said a rise in deaths, particularly among those aged 65 and over, is likely due to the high temperatures.

Nadra Ahmed, CEO of the National Care Association, said while fans and keeping residents hydrated are the norm within the care home setting, some providers got creative, fashioning communal rooms into indoor beaches.

But providers, she said, are coming to the conclusion that air-con is a necessity. She called for the Government to develop plans to support investment in climate action over concerns the cost of installation, which can run into the thousands, could be a barrier.

Ahmed said: “We are completely underfunded as it is, so anything we’re doing to support our residents is completely unfunded.”