The Climate Change Committee analysis is clear: government must start taking adaptation seriously

The Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) latest assessment  ¹⁰ https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/a-well-adapted-uk/  of UK climate risk, published just as the country heads into its first heatwave of the summer, shows just how important a challenge this is for government. But getting government to focus on the need to prepare for the climate change that is already happening, as opposed to focusing on the more glamorous task of mitigating future climate change, has never been easy.

The CCC’s alarming predictions of the impact of not acting have managed to make it into the news headlines – and Defra secretary Emma Reynolds has said she will “carefully consider the Climate Change Committee's latest recommendations to drive further action.”  ¹¹ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2p1j4y0kro  However, there is no guarantee that a cash-strapped government will follow through.  

The UK is not currently well-prepared for climate change

The CCC’s report says that 92% of existing homes are likely to overheat by 2050 with 2°C of warming, while high-quality farmland is predicted to drop from around 40% of land in England and Wales to just over 10%. Climate change damage could cost 1-5% of GDP by 2050 without additional adaptation. The world is not currently on track to keep warming below 2°C and warming of up to 4°C by 2100 cannot be ruled out, so these are reasonable estimates not worst-case scenarios.  

Adaptation is feasible but it needs to be considered across government. This, and previous, administrations are yet to really take this seriously and start preparing the country. But the CCC’s report makes it clear that doing this is far from impossible. It sets out feasible targets and actions across sectors, like putting air conditioning in hospitals, schools and care homes. It estimates that investment of around £11billion per year (2025 prices) would be needed from public and private sectors and would generate returns in the tens of billions. In 2025, total UK investment was £547 billion, around 50 times as much.  

But even before the government plans out future actions, its absolute first task should be to ensure that current actions are not making the situation worse. Many of the  CCC’s proposals are in this bucket: ensuring that subsidies cover heat pumps that are capable of cooling as well as heating, that new buildings are fit for the future climate and are not increasing risk of drought or built in areas at risk of flooding, and making sure critical national infrastructure is resilient to cascading risks – for example if drought is followed by flash flooding. These all seem no-brainers – but policy requires adjustment in each of these cases. Until those changes take place, government actions risk increasing, rather than closing, the adaptation gap in the future.  

Government should start by making adaptation a core value for money issue

Our research on how government can ensure adaptation is taken into account suggested it should treat adaptation as a core value for money issue – the CCC analysis suggests that investment in adaptation overall provides good returns, while limited resources would be wasted on building infrastructure that is not resilient to likely climate changes in the near future. The CCC has provided a helpful leg up to the government for hitting one of our recommendations – providing proposed targets to measure progress against in each sector. The government should now make it clear that adaptation is a core part of accounting officer responsibilities and departments should be taking it seriously. That should then be followed up by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and departmental select committees. That is one way of raising adaptation up departments’ priority lists.  

Government should ensure the CCC’s work on adaptation is properly funded

The original draft of the Climate Change Bill had no role for the CCC on adaptation. That was only agreed (in the face of opposition from government) during the passage of the bill.  

This week’s report shows the value of having the CCC scrutinise progress – or the lack of it – on adaptation. But in other respects, adaptation remains a bit of an afterthought. At the moment, for example, members of the CCC adaptation committee are paid less than the mitigation committee.  ¹² https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/CCC-Annual-Report-And-Accounts-2024-25.pdf  One way for the government to start showing it is taking adaptation more seriously would be to ensure it has the same resources and priority as mitigation in the CCC if not across government.

Resources may be scarce across government but the money needed to prepare for the UK for rising temperatures is not prohibitive. The costs of not doing so would be far more damaging.