There is a growing campaign among parts of Britain’s environmental establishment to discourage, restrict, or effectively ban air-conditioning in new residential developments. Officially, this is about saving the planet. Unofficially, it often feels like yet another skirmish in Britain’s never-ending war against comfort, convenience and, above all, aspiration. A new front for class war!
To some activists, air-conditioning is no longer a household appliance; it is a moral offence. Wanting to sleep through a summer heatwave without feeling like a slow-cooked casserole is apparently evidence of ecological irresponsibility. In this upside-down world, discomfort has become a virtue and a pool of perspiration a renewable energy source.
One cannot escape the suspicion that part of the hostility stems from the fact that air-conditioning has traditionally been associated with the middle classes. In modern Britain, any amenity that provides comfort, efficiency or a touch of luxury quickly attracts the attention of those who regard such things with ideological suspicion. The politics of envy has simply found a new target. Keeping cool in July has become a bourgeois indulgence.
The irony is that many supposedly green policies achieve precisely the opposite of their stated objectives. In one northwest London development, planners insisted on a centralised heating system rather than individual boilers. The result? Vast heat losses throughout the building, overheated flats, and widespread installation of air-conditioning, simply to make the properties bearable. It was the policy equivalent of driving with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake.
This is symptomatic of a wider malaise. Britain’s planning system is now entangled in layer upon layer of environmental regulation, consultation, assessment, and objection. Each measure may appear reasonable in isolation, but collectively they are helping to choke housing delivery.
The Government’s pledge in their manifesto before the election to build 1.5 million homes looks increasingly fanciful. A more realistic target is two thirds of this.
Housing completions remain well below historic levels, planning approvals routinely take years, and regulatory hurdles continue to multiply. The result is a chronic housing shortage that harms not wealthy homeowners but younger buyers, renters and those struggling to gain a foothold on the property ladder.
The environmental lobby rarely acknowledges this trade-off. Every delay, every objection and every additional requirement raises costs and reduces supply. The people ultimately paying the price are not developers or affluent householders but those at the bottom of the housing market.
Of course, environmental concerns matter. But there is a difference between sensible stewardship and ideological dogma. Britain cannot solve its housing crisis by making homes harder to build, more expensive to deliver and less pleasant to live in.
If air-conditioning is now regarded as an environmental vice, perhaps the next step will be a ban on ice cubes, followed by compulsory warm water in restaurants and government-issued hand fans. At times, one wonders whether some campaigners are trying to save the planet or simply making sure nobody is allowed to be too comfortable while doing so.
Britain does not suffer from a shortage of regulations. It suffers from a shortage of homes. Until policymakers recognise the difference, the housing crisis will deepen, affordability will worsen, and the greatest burden will continue to fall on those least able to bear it.
As we celebrate the anointing of the 13th housing minister in the last 10 years, it does appear that despite the feisty rhetoric of the Labour Party, the rate of building new homes in the UK is nothing short of pathetic. Unless someone has the cajónes to take a sledgehammer to regulatory systems, nothing will change, and we will forever more be in the parlous state that has been the case for the last 40 years. Twas ever thus.
Trevor Abrahmsohn is managing director of Glentree Estates in north London.
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