Adapting to climate change

Climate change will bring hotter, wetter and more frequent extreme weather to the UK.

An inner London borough such as Hammersmith & Fulham will exacerbate poor air quality, damage to infrastructure and economy and threats to natural capital due to the number of high-rise dwellings and buildings and lack of green spaces.

1. Heat adaptation initiatives

We are already delivering cooling initiatives across the borough to protect residents and businesses from hotter and more frequent extreme weather but there is more we could be doing to meet our targets.

Financial or in-kind donations towards the following project areas would help us to deliver real change

• greening the grey (removing concrete slabs and replacing them with green spaces)
• increasing the number of tree canopies to create shaded spaces
• installing cool air walking routes to keep the borough and its residents cool as the temperatures rise.

Delivering adaptation is costly, with initiatives that drive real change costing up to £1,000,000 or more! If you have expertise in these areas or you can provide support to help us prevent flooding and heating across the borough, please get in touch via the H&F Climate Alliance contact form here.

2. Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) to prevent flooding

To prevent flooding in the borough, we need to roll-out SuDS borough wide. SuDS manage stormwater locally to mimic natural drainage that occurs in natural habitats. We would like to deliver a variety of smaller cost projects and initiatives in the borough that create SuDS, these include:

• greening the grey – depaving communal spaces and walkways to replace them with permeable paving
• planting more trees or climbing plants to improve irrigation.

Find out about H&F’s surface-water management plan read our surface-water management plan | LBHF.

To support flood prevention across the borough contact our SuDS team suds@lbhf.gov.uk.

3. Adapt your own buildings

Adapting your own building will help us to reduce the 45% of emissions coming from commercial buildings across the borough. Why not try implementing the following at your site:

• regenerating roof spaces by planting trees and wildflowers
• depaving office terraces and patios, or site grounds to increase the number of green spaces
• painting roofs white to reflect sunlight and reduce temperatures.
  

Did you know

New York’s CoolRoofs programme has painted millions of square feet of rooftops white to decrease the temperatures inside buildings and lower air conditioning costs. Every 2,500 square feet of painted roof is lowering the city's carbon footprint by one ton of emissions.

Click the image for more information.

4. Map your organisation

Help us to identify indoor spaces across London for people to cope with cold and wintery weather.

Cool spaces

The Mayor of London has developed a map of cool and shaded places of refuge for Londoners when temperatures are high. Register your business as a cool space on the map for Londoners to escape to during a heatwave.

Visit the map to see which other organisations have registered their site as a cool space.