Second Hospital Working Group meeting

The second Hospital Working Group (HWG) meeting, chaired by Professor Shakoor Hajat, held on 16 July 2026.  The meeting brought together over 25 participants from the HEARTH team and external stakeholders across NHS Trusts, sustainability organisations, and academic institutions.

Key topics covered:

• Progress updates across the HEARTH programme related to hospitals, alongside insights from PPIE activities with patients and hospital staff.

• Cooling interventions in hospital settings, sharing practical insights and empirical findings from the ARCHI Project by Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust.

• Climate change adaptation planning, examining progress and emerging findings from Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust presented by Sustainability West Midlands.

  
  

HWG Discussions concluded with an open session focused on identifying opportunities for future collaboration and alignment between research teams and healthcare delivery partners.

Key messages and strategic priorities of the HWG second meeting:

• Overheating severity: Hospital temperatures regularly exceed 30°C due to poor ventilation, high occupancy, and building design, impacting patient care and staff wellbeing even outside formal heatwaves.

• Preferred solutions: Stakeholders favor passive measures (shading, ventilation, reducing solar gain) over portable AC, which poses safety, cost, and energy concerns.

• Building typologies and site selection: The HEARTH review linked 5 categories of heat-resilience measures to 6 UK hospital building types, while the ARCHIE project shortlisted 5 sites to evaluate interventions based on feasibility, sustainability, and cooling hierarchy.

• Combined strategy: Physical building adaptations must be paired with local estate expertise as well as operational, behavioral, and policy measures (e.g., heat-response procedures and staff guidance).

• Collaboration opportunities: Key data and climate-risk assessment findings can be shared across Crawley Hospital and the Bexley, Bromley, and Greenwich sites to inform intervention planning.