Please check on your friends and neighbours

THIS week the Met Office issued its first extreme heat warning, covering much of south west Wales – and aren’t we feeling it?

It’s a great start to the school summer holidays – I popped down to Burry Port Harbour on the weekend to see the restoration of the lighthouse and it was a pleasure to see local families and tourists enjoying the beach and cooling off with an ice cream. The sun always makes everything seem a little better, but whilst we can all welcome the start of summer the extreme heat can become unbearable for some and it’s something we should all be mindful of.

Showing the same kindness as we saw during the pandemic, please check on your friends and neighbours – some more vulnerable people may be really struggling in the heat. Perhaps help by offering to pick up some shopping so they can stay cool indoors, or help them draw curtains and blinds to keep the heat out. As a result of climate change, we are being told that we’re more likely to see prolonged spells of extreme heat during our summers.

And – as we’ve seen in Germany and Belgium over the past week – we’re also likely to see extreme weather in all its forms, with flooding more likely as sea temperatures rise and weather becomes more volatile.

As a council we were one of the first in the UK to declare a climate emergency, and the first in Wales to publish a climate change action plan with a commitment to become net carbon zero by 2030.