Air conditioning in new homes would become a legal requirement under Liberal Democrat proposals to make British housing “climate ready”, a policy that would reshape build specifications, service charges and tenant expectations across the private rented sector at precisely the moment landlords are already being asked to fund an energy efficiency overhaul.
The party wants every new UK home to be fitted with air conditioning or an alternative cooling system, arguing that the country’s housing stock is dangerously ill-suited to the temperatures it now routinely experiences.
It also wants cooling made mandatory in essential public buildings including schools and health facilities, and is pushing passive measures such as planting more trees in residential areas.
A market already moving without legislation
The commercial signal is arguably ahead of the political one. The number of UK homes with air conditioning has doubled in the past three years amid rising temperatures, according to industry estimates.
That still leaves roughly 4 million units across an estimated 30 million-plus homes, or around one in eight. For investors, the gap between installed base and demand is the point.
Polling commissioned by the Liberal Democrats found 28 per cent of people had bought a fan or an air conditioning unit during the recent heatwaves, while 26 per cent said the conditions had left them feeling unwell or faint.
Landlords who have spent the past two years focused on the mandatory EPC C upgrades arriving under the Warm Homes Plan now face a second, less well defined retrofit conversation, and one that pulls in the opposite direction on energy consumption.
The regulatory picture is already unsettled
Cooling is not virgin territory for building control. Approved Document O, in force since June 2022, already requires new residential buildings in England to be assessed for overheating risk at design stage, though it leans on passive solutions such as limiting glazing and ensuring adequate ventilation rather than mandating mechanical cooling.
A Liberal Democrat “climate ready” programme would go considerably further, making a cooling system a legal condition of building a home. The party says this matters most for older residents and those in poor health.
The immediate context is a UK Health Security Agency yellow heat alert running from Tuesday morning until Friday morning across the south-east, south-west and east of England, the Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber. London is forecast to reach 32C (90F) on Wednesday before cooling, while other parts of the UK will be wet and notably cooler.
The summer has been dry as well as hot. In July so far there has been just 5 per cent of average rainfall across England, falling to 1 per cent in the south, bringing drought and severe wildfire risk. Ground movement and subsidence claims tend to follow, a familiar cost line for portfolio holders in clay soil areas.
What the politicians are saying
Tim Farron, the party’s environment spokesperson, said: “This latest set of relentless heatwaves has taught us that Britain is woefully unprepared for extreme heat, and families across Britain are paying for the cost of inaction.
“With another heatwave on the horizon, the government must step in with a new plan that takes the onus off already-struggling Brits and commits developers to build homes fit for the future, insulated properly and equipped with air conditioning.”
Gideon Amos, the party’s housing spokesperson, took aim at space standards. “Air conditioning is becoming essential in UK homes, which are now among the smallest and hottest in Europe after previous Conservatives governments swept away minimum space standards,” he said.
“Andy Burnham must see sense and enable the country to adapt fast, looking at how we build well for the future so that we give our society the security needed during these devastating heatwaves.”
The human numbers behind the policy are stark. The heatwaves of May and June, which included an unprecedented three successive days of red warnings for extreme heat, killed about 2,700 people, with a peak fatality rate of around 440 people a day, according to an analysis led by Imperial College London. More than 40 per cent of those affected would not have died without the 1.4C of human-caused heating to date. ONS excess mortality data for heat periods tells a similar story over a longer run.
What this means for investors
Nothing here is law, and the Liberal Democrats are not in a position to make it so. But policy proposals have a habit of becoming procurement expectations first and regulations second, and developers pricing schemes for delivery in 2028 and beyond should assume cooling appears somewhere in the specification.
For landlords, the sharper question is competitive rather than legal. If a quarter of tenants are already buying cooling equipment themselves, a cooled flat is a lettings advantage in exactly the southern markets where yields are thinnest and void periods most expensive.
The cost side is unforgiving. Retrofitting mechanical cooling into an older terrace is disruptive, planning-sensitive where external units are involved, and adds running costs that sit awkwardly with EPC C compliance. Investors have already seen how quickly a fashionable building product can turn into a lending problem, as the spray foam insulation mortgage refusals demonstrated.
The rational position for most portfolio holders is to treat cooling as a specification question on acquisition rather than a retrofit programme. Orientation, glazing ratio and ventilation are cheap to assess and impossible to change later, and they are already reflected in new-build pricing in regions where affordability is under pressure. Buy the building that does not overheat, and the debate about who pays for the air conditioning becomes somebody else’s problem.
