UK petition: Maximum working temperature
UK work guidance has a minimum safe temperature for employees at work, but not a maximum one.
Click here to sign a petition to get the UK Health and Safety Executive to implement a maximum safe working temperature.
Here's the link to the official UK government petition. You can only sign if you are a UK resident or a British citizen, but if it gets enough signatures, it's required to be heard.
SIGN BOTH!!!
It's quick and easy and could save a life. My office reached 31 Celsius today. It was not the hottest office in the building. We do not have any fans for electrical safety reasons. There was an emergency ice pops run at lunch, which sounds funny but we were genuinely concerned our pregnant colleague was approaching heatstroke and the official guidance is to 'open a window'. Heat kills! Outdoor and manual jobs have it even worse right now too. I know I'm lucky to be able to be sitting down with free access to water during this!
Thankfully, the heatwave has passed for the UK now. But this is still really important. Our heatwaves often have high humidity, which makes work even more dangerous in high temperatures.
I've started a graph for the UK parliament petition here. The deadline is 16th December 2026, and you can sign if you're a UK resident (regardless of citizenship) or a UK citizen (regardless of current nation of residence).
Sign here.
This sounds like something that should be an intentional standard, and apparently, the ILO has been working on it in the past months, though, as it's usual with intentional organisations based on intergovernmental treaties, their phrasing isn't the most prescriptive:
In accordance with established procedures, the Conclusions will be submitted to the ILO Governing Body for consideration.
