How the UK’s high temperatures are changing the conversation about air-con.

Those who think Britain’s cold hostility approaches a form of masochism stand against him.

David Lawrence of the British Progress think tank put it plainly: We’re not telling people to insulate their homes in winter and then skip the radiators. So why insist that shades and hoods are enough in the summer?

He pointed out that air conditioning is now standard in offices, hotels and shops, “but we don’t expect it for schools and hospitals – which is strange, because those are places where millions of people are every day” and the temperature affects concentration, learning and health.

This disagreement over the pros and cons of the technology is becoming political.

Some London councils have adopted a “cooling hierarchy” where cooling of low-energy homes should be prioritized over air conditioning, and in a small number of cases they have ordered property owners to remove them. The Conservative front bench calls it “dark age” miserabilism. Other members of parliament and political analysts are asking for an “airborne revolution”.

From April, the Boiler Improvement Scheme in England and Wales offered £2,500 for a reversible air-to-air heat pump: a machine that heats a house in winter and cools it in summer. It’s in all but name, Britain’s first air-conditioning subsidy – but it’s badged as a heat pump, and costs just a third of the £7,500 for the heating-only model.

Such was the silence surrounding this aid, only around 45 households claimed it in the first month. By comparison, the numbers for heater-only models are in the thousands.

Homeowners in Scotland can get a £7,500 grant for a heat pump through the Home Energy scheme – but there’s no funding available for air-to-air versions of cooling. And there is no universal heat pump grant for households in Northern Ireland.

Under the England and Wales scheme, some people cannot apply at all. It is closed to social housing and new builds – which many argue shuts out the most vulnerable.

Take Woolwich, south-east London, where resident Keisha sees her top-floor flat reach 43C during a heatwave.

She calls the building “inhuman”; She and about two dozen neighbors at Canadian Court and Clifton Lodge are taking their landlord, housing association PA Housing, to court over homes they say are uninhabitable.