Kate Williamson is a research associate focused on climate change adaptation at the Oxford Centre of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and was seconded to the UK Climate Change Committee in 2025. Magnus Benzie is a UK-based affiliated researcher with SEI.
Travel and health services have been upended in the UK as high temperatures lead rails to buckle, electric lines to sag and computer systems to fail.
More new homes are being built on flood-prone plains, and more existing homes are likely to become uninsurable as flood risks grow. Costs of food, petrol and diesel are rising in the wake of extreme weather and disruptions in global supply chains for fertiliser and fuel.
The threats posed by climate change to people in the UK have never been so palpable in so many aspects of daily life. Meanwhile, the policy agenda to address these impacts is practically invisible – eclipsed by other public concerns and confined to largely unimplemented and inadequate plans. It is no accident that the term describing this policy agenda – adaptation – is not widely understood by the general public.
Upcoming report on “well-adapted UK”
The UK needs to change direction and now. This month presents a new opportunity to set a viable course. On May 20, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – the UK’s independent advisory body on climate change – will release a first-of-its-kind report on creating a “well-adapted UK” as part of its assessment of UK climate risks.
The report will set out evidence on how best to address those risks. In doing so, it will highlight how such a policy agenda can improve daily life for the country’s population.
Action is long overdue. Thirteen years ago, the UK published its first National Adaptation Plan, which articulated a vision for “a society which makes timely, far-sighted and well-informed decisions to address the risks and opportunities posed by a changing climate”. Since then, second and third editions of this plan have circulated, and a fourth is in the works. Despite multiple cycles of planning, current adaptation policies are still described by the CCC as “inadequate”, “piecemeal” and “heading in the wrong direction”.
Meanwhile, climate change has become a crisis of today, not a distant, future threat.
The public does not need to know the technical jargon of adaptation to understand what they witness first-hand: more frequent extreme weather events, people at risk from high heat in poor housing, and food and fuel poverty exacerbated by wild weather events in the countries that produce our imports. No wonder most UK voters consider the UK unprepared for climate change.
From policy to real resilience
To improve, the UK must move adaptation from the policy periphery and make on-the-ground resilience a central and well-funded focus. Here are ways to begin:
1. Start honest conversations with the public about what adaptation means and why it can help address other pressing concerns. If policymakers talk about adaptation in a way that addresses the things people see and care about, the public is more likely to come along with them. The fragmentation that surfaced in this month’s local elections – with a surge by the Reform Party on the right, the Green Party on the left, and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales – shows that business-as-usual policies are failing to generate voter support. Ignoring or denying climate change is not a path towards resolving the issues that ail the UK.
Efforts must be made to demonstrate, across the political spectrum, that climate policies are not the enemy of prosperity. Policymakers must make it clear that climate adaptation has to be part of the answer in dealing with public concerns about affordable food and energy, safe and comfortable homes, and healthy lives. The Green Party’s winning campaign in the February by-election in Gorton and Denton, for example, framed environmental issues with respect to local concerns. This is a powerful illustration of how such an approach can resonate.
2. Upgrade adaptation governance to reflect the enormity, complexity and scope of the challenges ahead. Climate change is a force to be reckoned with in virtually all aspects of governance and at all levels. Dealing with it requires all hands on deck. At present, the UK employs a piecemeal approach that has lost the country its role as a global climate adaptation leader. One way to summon the necessary political and financial clout would be to place the adaptation agenda at the heart of government. The UK should leverage a new “strategic resilience” approach – one dedicated to addressing climate shocks and other strategic challenges that occur both within and beyond national borders – as outlined in our recent working paper.
3. Give communities meaningful ways be part of policy decision-making. The results of 2026 local elections make clear that people in the UK are demanding change. Governments at all levels can rebuild trust by meaningfully collaborating with citizens, integrating local concerns into plans, and implementing these. This is not easy, but it can be done. Citizen assemblies, public dialogues and game-play have all proven to be effective.
In a policy secondment at the Climate Change Committee, one of us witnessed the enormous effort that went into finding ways to help decision-makers chart a course to a resilient, stable and healthy future for the UK. The government must now act on the evidence and expert advice, with the level of urgency that the climate crisis requires and Britain’s people deserve.
Key findings from the “Well-adapted UK” report will be the subject of a webinar on May 21 hosted the Climate Change Committee and the UK Maximising Adaptation to Climate Change Hub.
