Community Hub at Ruth Winston Centre: Climate Change and Older People

In 2003 there was a heat wave across Europe that resulted in over 70,000 deaths mainly older people living alone. As a result, several countries began to look at strategies to cope with excessive heat in future years. And it was Paris that developed one of the most comprehensive excess heat strategies in the world. In the heat wave across Europe two years ago the deaths were significantly lower. In the UK we are nowhere near as prepared as Paris and the Climate Change Committee that advises the Government argues that in the UK we are behind many other countries in adapting to extreme weather.

n the Community Hub on June 25th at Ruth Winston House we hope to hear the views of local people and groups about their concerns about the coming years when summer is likely to see 40 degrees several days in a row and sometimes even peaking to 45 degrees.

• How can people cope, how can they be helped and what can the statutory authorities do to prepare for this eventuality?
• How do we identify people at risk and have an extensive database of those people?
• How can they be contacted, prepared for a crisis and helped when that crisis happens?
• What is the role of the community and can they mobilise as they did in the Covid crisis?

Often people seek solutions after a crisis hits them but we now have enough warning that future temperatures will put people at risk, especially those older and living alone. Such high temperatures will also adversely affect the health of many others. It is foolish to wait until a crisis hits us. We must be prepared beforehand. So the June 25th Hub will address some of these issues, including what households can do to protect their health and ensure they have cool homes or places to go that are cooling refuges.

We hope this Hub will be the beginning of a conversation locally about the actions needed and how we can together take the actions necessary that prevent the deaths that Europe experienced in 2003.

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