As the UK prepares for the third heatwave of 2026, most people will be hoping to try and keep cool at home.

Building regulations to protect homes from overheating were introduced in 2022. These require all new homes to be checked at the design stage to see if they might be at risk of overheating. If the overheating risk is high, the architect has to make changes to the design.

Given that the UK government plans to build 1.5 million homes by 2029 and the climate is predicted to continue to warm, reducing overheating in new homes is essential. Around 4.6 million bedrooms (19% of the stock) and 3.6 million living rooms (15%) in homes in England were found to have overheated during the summer of 2018.

At Loughborough University we have been experimenting with a pair of semi-detached houses, each fitted with different shading devices, to see what might work to reduce overheating. A lot more needs to be done to make sure UK homes are able to cope with the high temperatures they are likely to experience more often in the future.

1. External shading

If you live in the UK, count the number of window shades you can see on a street. While these were previously quite common in the Victorian period, for instance, most new homes don’t have external shading. But they are one of the most effective passive cooling measures (methods to lower indoor temperatures without air conditioning), as well as being relatively cheap to install.

Ongoing experiments in our pair of test houses have shown that external shading can reduce indoor temperatures by over 6°C, which can make a meaningful improvement to people’s health and wellbeing at home. Other research is looking at how acceptable and affordable shading devices, like awnings, are to householders.

If included at design-stage, some form of external window shading could be applied to almost any new home – even high-rise flats, which are at highest risk of overheating. Tall blocks of flats in countries like France and Italy often incorporate shading on balconies.

2. Insulated and airtight

Some people believe that higher levels of insulation are increasing overheating risk – but this is not correct. Research shows that energy efficiency measures do not increase overheating. They do make rooms warmer, but not so much that they cause overheating discomfort or health risks to people. Increased temperatures from internal wall insulation can be counteracted with ventilation through windows.

Insulation works to ensure that heat does not flow in either direction – in or out of a building. A large national survey of homes in England found that loft insulation reduces overheating, probably because it protects the room below from the high temperatures that can be experienced in loft spaces. Higher levels of airtightness reduces infiltration of hot air from outside during heatwaves.

Building regulations in the past have only focused on reducing wintertime heating demand and for good reason – in the last 25 years, 77 times more people died due to cold homes than hot homes. But combined with new regulations for overheating which limits the sun’s heat entering through windows, high levels of insulation and airtightness can be a positive thing for our buildings all year round.

3. Secure ventilation and sensors

Research in our test houses also investigated the effect of behaviour on overheating. To do this we used synthetic occupants – these are automated devices which can open windows, doors, curtains, and blinds. These controlled tests showed that the way people use windows and shading affects how much their home overheats. I spent a lot of time during recent heatwaves advising people when to open or close their windows. But this ignores the fact that poor building design is often the cause of overheating in many cases – no matter when you open your windows.

If homes could incorporate a cheap and simple temperature sensor which connects to the internet and tells you when to open or close a window it could significantly reduce indoor temperatures. Placed in multiple rooms, they could encourage householders to use cross-ventilation (opening windows on opposite sides of the building) or stack-ventilation (opening ground and first-floor windows), if available.

The issue remains that people are unwilling or unable to open their windows at night or in polluted, noisy areas near main roads. Instead we need a secure means of ventilation which encourages people to keep windows open at night without worrying about security or being woken up by noise.

4. Ceiling fans

Fans don’t cool the air, but they reduce the skin’s surface temperature by increasing sweat evaporation and carrying away heat. They also use considerably less electricity compared to air-conditioning.

Ceiling fans are effective at reducing people’s core body temperature and could be installed in all new-build homes. Building regulations on overheating require any window coverings used to pass the assessment to be installed during construction. Ceiling fans should be installed at the same time.

If new-build homes are to incorporate ceiling fans, ceiling heights may need to increase, which adds to building costs. Ceiling heights in UK homes have dropped over time. In Victorian homes, ceilings were often three metres from the floor, but in newly built UK homes they are commonly 2.4 metres, with 2.3 metres being the standard minimum.

5. A cool refuge

Having a cool room to retreat to in your home can help. In two-storey houses this might be a ground floor or north-facing room. New-build homes could incorporate such a space – highly shaded, on the north-side of the home, and perhaps built with high thermal mass (such as stone walls which keep cool longer during the day).

Mechanically cooling whole houses in the UK should be avoided due to high electricity prices. It also creates pressure on the electricity grid, and creates greenhouse gases. But the Committee on Climate Change, a UK body that advises the government, recently suggested creating one cool room with active cooling (air-conditioning) for use during long heatwaves could be an option.

As more heatwaves hit the UK, residents will increasingly want more information about how to stay cool. Retrofits can be expensive. We need to create housing that works in these increasingly high temperatures to best protect people and avoid expensive energy bills.

Across South Africa, there are various ways for people to report issues like broken infrastructure, unreliable water supply, failing clinics and poor municipal services. The channels include ward meetings, hotlines, and digital platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and X. Complaints are often shared publicly and sometimes gain traction.

But are they enough? As a researcher specialising in governance, public policy and citizen-based monitoring, I recently conducted a study examining whether the system in South Africa is working as it should. The study was prompted by the paradox that despite the expansion of citizen participation mechanisms and digital reporting platforms since 2013, public dissatisfaction with service delivery remains high. This raises questions about whether citizen feedback is influencing government decision-making.

Citizen-based monitoring was introduced by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation in 2013. It was designed to strengthen accountability and improve frontline service delivery by enabling citizens to monitor public services and communicate their experiences directly to government institutions.

My research shows that the central problem behind persistent service delivery failures is not the absence of public participation. South Africans continue to report problems, attend meetings, engage online and raise concerns about service delivery. The deeper problem is the absence of institutional response. Citizen-generated feedback is rarely integrated into formal government systems such as planning, budgeting, performance management, or service delivery processes. This means many complaints are acknowledged but not acted upon.

The study therefore recommends embedding citizen-generated feedback directly into government planning, budgeting, performance management and service delivery systems so that participation can translate into action.

The systems failures

Our research involved collecting survey data and conducting qualitative interviews with 12 representatives across government, civil society and community media. Participants included government officials responsible for citizen engagement, monitoring and service delivery oversight, leaders of civil society organisations involved in social accountability initiatives and community radio practitioners who regularly facilitate dialogue between citizens and government. The findings reveal persistent challenges.

There is limited integration of citizen-based monitoring into core government systems. In many cases, citizen feedback mechanisms operate separately from formal planning, budgeting and performance management systems. This means complaints are collected but not systematically translated into government action.

There has been a decline in participation. Interview participants reported lower attendance at ward meetings and reduced public engagement with formal participation mechanisms, which they attributed to frustration with the limited government response to citizen feedback.

There are unclear institutional mandates, such as uncertainty over whether municipalities, provincial departments, ward councillors, or national government structures are responsible for responding to citizen complaints. This fragmentation diffuses responsibility for responding to citizen feedback across departments and spheres of government, allowing issues to fall through the cracks and leaving citizens without answers.

There is inadequate follow-through on citizen feedback.

Key drivers of this include:

• Weak institutional ownership: in South Africa, citizen-based monitoring is managed inconsistently across departments and municipalities. No single institution is clearly responsible for coordinating responses and ensuring accountability. As a result, citizen-based monitoring is frequently treated as a temporary project or pilot rather than embedded within core government functions such as planning, budgeting and performance management. This leads to weak accountability, fragmented implementation and inconsistent responses to citizen concerns.

• Digital exclusion: digital platforms as WhatsApp, Facebook, X and municipal reporting portals have added another layer to this dynamic. These platforms offer new opportunities for visibility and engagement but also expose the limitations of existing systems. This is highlighted in debates on open government, where transparency does not automatically translate into responsiveness. Institutions such as the UNDP governance programme emphasise the importance of models that combine digital and offline participation. Reliance on digital tools also risks excluding those without access to technology or the skills to use it.

• Donor dependency: many citizen-monitoring initiatives rely on temporary donor-funded projects. These often collapse once funding ends.

• Low public awareness: citizens don’t know about platforms they can use to report service delivery failures.

• Limited feedback loops: citizens don’t get updates on whether their complaint was received, investigated, or resolved.

The consequence is a growing sense of frustration among citizens. They begin to question the value of engaging with formal systems when their participation does not produce visible change. It leads to declining trust in public institutions and, in some cases, increased reliance on protest action.

Signs of progress

The study also identified positive factors such as enabling policy frameworks, structured capacity-building aimed at strengthening the skills of government officials responsible for citizen engagement and service delivery monitoring and the adoption of digital reporting and communication tools by government departments and municipalities.

The study recommends embedding citizen-based monitoring more directly into formal government systems such as planning, budgeting, performance management and municipal reporting structures. This will make it more likely that citizen feedback contributes to decision-making and accountability.

In practice, this would mean that complaints raised through ward committees, WhatsApp groups, municipal hotlines, social media, or community radio are formally recorded, assigned to responsible departments, tracked through digital systems, linked to municipal performance targets, and followed up with feedback to citizens on actions taken.

It also requires recognising the continued importance of local communication platforms such as community radio. These are important channels for engagement in many parts of the country, particularly where digital access is limited.

The success of citizen-based monitoring depends on whether governments respond to what citizens are saying.

The challenge is building systems that require government to respond. In Brazil, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre linked citizen priorities directly to municipal spending decisions.

In Kenya, the Huduma Kenya service model includes complaint tracking and service-request management. South Africa could adopt similar mechanisms: complaint tracking, response deadlines, public dashboards and direct links between citizen reports and municipal budgets.

Until citizen feedback is embedded into governance systems, participation will fall short of its potential.