What happened

The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee published its report A burning issue: managing wildfire risk on 21 October 2026. It describes the summer of 2026 as one of the most severe wildfire seasons the UK has experienced, with fires in all four nations, and says the response exposed weaknesses in preparedness and resilience: gaps in specialist capability, competition for aerial firefighting, and difficulty securing water supplies during major incidents. It notes that wildfires often happen during drought and extreme heat, when water networks are already under pressure.

The committee's main recommendations to government include:

  • publish a cross-government Wildfire Action Plan by the end of 2026, with the actions to take before the 2027 wildfire season;
  • publish a National Wildfire Strategy for England within 12 months of responding to the report;
  • set out a model for a UK-wide aerial firefighting capability;
  • review the 2026 season's lessons, including support for retained and volunteer firefighters, before spring 2027.

The report also mentions businesses disrupted by fires and records that the government introduced a temporary ban on selling disposable barbecues in England, Scotland and Wales on 14 August 2026. These are recommendations from MPs to government, not new rules for businesses.

The same week, news sites reported MSCI's research paper Too Hot to Work?. MSCI's modelling suggests heat-related losses in labour productivity equal around 2% of global GDP today, rising to 3.3% under a high-emissions scenario over the next 75 years, and that around 81% of companies in its global equity index show some estimated revenue impact. These are modelled figures for large listed companies, not measured losses, but the direction is clear: heat costs money through people working more slowly, or not at all.

What it means for a small business

Heat reaches a small business in four ways: staff who can't work safely or well, premises that overheat or sit near land that can burn, stock that spoils or degrades, and supply when suppliers, deliveries or utilities are disrupted. None of this is new, but after record summers it is no longer hypothetical, and buyers know it.

Public sector tenders and large customers' supplier questionnaires increasingly ask which climate risks could affect your delivery and what you do about them. Our post on climate risk questions in tenders has model answers, and climate risk for small suppliers explains how this fits a TCFD-style reply. A dated, site-by-site note on heat is the kind of specific answer that scores better than a general statement.

On staff, the Health and Safety Executive is clear that there is no legal maximum working temperature, because every workplace is different. Employers must still keep the temperature at a comfortable level and provide clean, fresh air, under health and safety law. A heat plan for staff (shade, water, breaks, flexible hours, ventilation) belongs in your risk assessment.

What to do now

  1. Add heat to your climate risk register. For each site, note how hot it got this summer, who and what was affected, and what you did. Our climate risk assessment guide has a one-row-per-site table. Drought is a related risk: see our post on the severe drought direction to protect water supply.
  2. Check your suppliers and deliveries. Which key suppliers or routes stopped during hot spells, and do you have a second option?
  3. Try the low-carbon measures first. Blinds and shading, opening windows at night, moving heat-generating equipment, and changing working hours cost little and add no emissions.
  4. If you add air conditioning, count it. It adds electricity use, and the refrigerant inside can leak. Choose a unit with a lower-impact refrigerant, have it installed and leak-checked by a certified engineer, and keep the service records.

What cooling adds to your footprint

Take an illustrative small office that fits a split air conditioning unit. It uses an extra 1,000 kWh of electricity a year, and one year the engineer has to top it up with 1 kg of R32 refrigerant:

  • Electricity (Scope 2): 1,000 kWh × 0.13096 = 131 kg CO2e
  • Refrigerant leak (Scope 1): 1 kg of R32 × 677 = 677 kg CO2e
  • Total: 808 kg, or 0.81 tonnes CO2e at the 2026 UK government factors

One leak like this weighs about as much as 5 years of the unit's electricity. That is why regular leak checks matter, and why our post on refrigerant leaks and Scope 1 explains how to get the top-up figures from your engineer.

كيف يساعدكم Carbon Recycling

The Climate risk add-on checks each of your sites' postcodes and shows the number of days a year above 30°C now, at 2°C and at 4°C of global warming, from the Met Office's UKCP18 projections, alongside flood risk and the change in summer rainfall. It gives each site a plain rating and prints a climate risk summary you can use in a tender answer. It is a screening from official data, not a survey of your building.

In your carbon report, you enter electricity in kWh and refrigerant top-ups in kilograms by gas, and Carbon Recycling applies the right year's government factor and puts them in Scope 2 and Scope 1. So if you add cooling, its emissions show up in the same report and Carbon Reduction Plan your buyers read.