'A question of fairness': Analysis exposes those most at risk of overheating and pollution

People of colour or on low income are more than twice as likely to live in neighbourhoods that are polluted and prone to overheating, according to new analysis shared exclusively with Sky News.

"This is a question of fairness," said Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth.

The charity's new interactive map illustrates areas that are the most financially and nature-deprived, and exposed to flooding, heat and pollution.

"If you are living in a home that is impossible to cool or heat, you are living in some of the worst housing in Western Europe," Rehman told Sky News.

"If you're living in an area which is nature-deprived, you are more likely to feel heat in a very, very different way."

London is a hotspot for such neighbourhoods, but they are also concentrated in the East and West Midlands, East of England and South East.

Flats 'like ovens'

In west London, Iryna, a Ukrainian mother of two, has been living in temporary accommodation for the past two years.

When we visit at 11.30am, it is already 33.6C inside. By evening it can reach 38C. The family spend much of their time in the park because they cannot bear to be inside.

"I feel like I'm in the oven," says Iryna, as she shows us around her flat: blinds drawn, fans stationed in every room.

Iryna has Graves' disease, which means she has an overactive thyroid that already makes her prone to overheat.

"It can kill me... my body attacks itself", she says.

Her story is extreme but not isolated.

And this week has prompted complaints from all walks of life about insufferable heat in hospitals, homes, schools and buses. Air conditioning sales have soared this summer.

The problem has been building for decades: most of Britain's homes were designed to keep the heat in, not out.

But pressure is mounting on the government to adapt the country to a warming climate.

It commissioned a review that in May warned air conditioning or heat pumps that can also cool homes are becoming "unavoidable" in parts of England.

In response to this story, a government spokesperson said it was carefully considering the recommendations from that review, and that it "recognised the disproportionate impact that climate change has on vulnerable people".

"We are already taking action to help safeguard people, livelihoods and our natural environment by investing in clean power [and] ensuring new residential buildings are designed to minimise unwanted heat from the sun," they told Sky News.

It has also launched a new Local Authority Climate Service to advise councils on adapting infrastructure for hotter summers and heavier flooding.

But it is facing an ongoing legal challenge from Friends of the Earth, which accuses it of failing to adapt the country to more extreme weather.

Meanwhile, Britons like Tayshan Hayden-Smith are ploughing ahead on their own.

He grew up opposite Grenfell Tower. After it burned down in a deadly disaster in 2017, he found solace in gardening, and continues to transform neglected green spaces via his Grow to Know non-profit organisation.

He said: "People sit around tables, make decisions based on who's deserved of what and I think Grenfell epitomised that."

We are speaking in Mozilla Gardens in the starkly unequal borough of Kensington and Chelsea, home to Kensington Palace and affluent Chelsea, as well as some of the most deprived wards in London.

"And so this is really a movement to try and address that inequality, and bring things to people who need it most... things like beauty, safety, a sense of belonging, a sense of pride, a sense of place."

(c) Sky News 2026: 'A question of fairness': Analysis exposes those most at risk of overheating and pollution