Right now, England is experiencing one of the most intense heatwaves on record. The Met Office has issued its highest-level Red Extreme Heat Warning, with temperatures in southern England forecast to reach 38°C, a figure that could break the June record held since 1976. Humidity levels are being described by forecasters as "oppressive," with overnight temperatures offering almost no relief.
For many disabled people, heatwaves are a threat to life, dignity and safety. And the main reason for that is not their health condition, impairment or neurodivergence. It's a government failure to make buildings where disabled people live, work and receive medical care safe in a warming climate.
Dangerously overheating: Care homes, NHS hospitals, community venues
Across England right now, care homes have no legal requirement to provide mechanical cooling. NHS buildings, many of them ageing, poorly ventilated, and designed for a cooler climate are struggling to keep temperatures safe for patients and staff. (Refences)
The National Adaptation Programme — the government's framework for preparing the country for climate change — doesn’t include robust, enforceable standards to ensure these places are adequately cooled. The targets are vague, the accountability is weak, and the voices of disabled people have been largely absent from the planning process altogether.
That's why Friends of the Earth is working with communities on the frontline of extreme weather to take the government to the European Court of Human Rights over its inadequate National Adaptation Plan regarding extreme weather protection.
Meet Doug: fighting for disability justice, not charity
Doug Paulley is a disability rights campaigner in his forties. He is a care home resident. He won a landmark UK Supreme Court case securing wheelchair users' right to bus spaces. He is also a co-claimant in Friends of the Earth’s legal challenge before the European Court of Human Rights, seeking to strengthen the government’s climate adaptation plans, including to better protect disabled people.
Doug's motivation is rooted in decades of fighting for justice. In his own words:
Disabled people are among the minorities considered most expendable in any catastrophe or emergency. And climate change is an emergency. This is an existential crisis for humanity, but particularly for the most dispossessed and under-resourced groups — and that includes disabled people.
Doug Paulley, Co-claimant, Friends of the Earth European Court of Human Rights challenge | Disability rights campaigner
'Nothing about us without us' is a slogan that orginated in the disability rights Movement and is now used widely in intersectional struggles for oppressed peoples. Which speaks to why it is important to co-produce adaptation plans with disabled people, not to make provision for a group seen as passive recipients of care, but to recognise disabled people as rights-holders who are being actively failed by a system that has excluded them from decision-making.
Let's be clear about what we mean — and what we don't
Much of the media coverage this week will describe disabled people, older people and people with health conditions as "vulnerable." We think that framing is wrong, and here's why it matters. Friends of the Earth uses the social model of disability, developed by the UK Disabled People's Rights Movement.
It draws a crucial distinction between impairment ( a person’s individual health condition, physical, sensory mental health, neurodivergence, cognitive diagnosis) and disability (the social barriers that exclude people and create risk). Disability is created by inaccessible buildings, underfunded services, and policies made without disabled people at the table.
A care home resident isn't solely at risk this week because they have certain health conditions that predispose them to the impacts of extreme heat. They are at risk because the building they live in has no cooling and community ‘cool spaces’ can lack vital accessibility features such as ‘Changing Places toilets ‘ and because the government's adaptation programme was not built with them in mind.