Ashitha Nagesh
BBC News Community Affairs Correspondent

Many bike couriers have continued to work despite being unavoidably exposed to the sweltering heat.

Shaf Hussain delivers for a few different apps, including Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat. He tells me that he's been out in east London today, and is planning to work again tomorrow.

"It's pretty normal to work in scorching hot weather," he says, adding that he's worked in several heatwaves before. His advice to other riders is to "drink as much water as you can".

Image source, Shaf Hussain

Many couriers are classed as self-employed, which means that they can choose whether or not to work in extreme weather. But Shaf says that in most cases this would mean going unpaid.

"[The apps] send out warnings [about extreme weather], but... at the end of the month I still have to pay my bills, pay my rent."

Ahmed Hafezi, who has been a courier for two years, agrees: "When you're working full-time and it's your only job, and main source of income... you have to log in to work or you're not going to make enough money for the week to survive."

Ahmed says he thinks apps should still pay couriers when they're unable to work because of extreme weather events, "which are becoming more common due to climate change".

Just Eat told BBC News it had temporarily suspended deliveries in areas hit badly by the heat. It added that it uses several different worker models for couriers, and that riders on their "agency worker model will be paid for shifts that were cancelled".

Fire crews have been battling a major fire in woodland at Lickey Hills Country Park on the edge of Birmingham.

Twelve fire engines are tackling the blaze which broke out at the beauty spot at 13:15 BST.

Read more here

Image source, Chloe's Photography

Luton Airport has said its runway is now back in full working order.

The runway reopened to arriving and departing flights at 18:05 BST, a spokesperson said in a statement.

Flights were suspended earlier on Monday after a surface defect caused by the heat.

Hugh Pym
BBC News Health Editor

Adayah Richards-Clark was born this morning in the middle of this heatwave.

Sitting in the maternity ward of St Helier Hospital in London, Adayah’s mother Kade says they brought in their own fans from home to cool her down during the birth.

“I had my mum fanning me with a hand-held fan, I had my husband holding the fan right up to my face," she says.

Sitting contentedly gazing at their hours old baby, the ward temperature was reaching 32 degrees by mid-afternoon.

A water birth helped Kade manage the heat. "We’re hot, the baby is hot, we’re irritated, the baby's irritated but we made it, we're good.”

With flights disrupted at Luton Airport, some travellers have been left wondering whether they will be able to take off today or not.

Andy Hobbs, 56 from Hampshire, heard an announcement at the airport saying that his flight from from Luton to the Greek island of Corfu had been delayed because of the runway melting.

"All the flights are showing delayed. Absolutely everything," he said.

He added that the flight was estimated to take off two hours later than scheduled, but that all the flights are saying pretty much the same thing, or later.

“There’s not enough seats for everyone, people are wandering around" the airport, he said.

“There’s more and more people coming in for later flights too.”

Some good news for those hoping to depart Luton Airport tonight: The airport has just announced that flights leaving Luton resumed at 17:40 BST - but arrivals remain suspended until further notice in the wake of those earlier problems reported with the surface of the runway.

Simon King
BBC Weather

The average maximum temperatures in July range from 19 to 24C across the UK.

Temperatures on Monday and Tuesday will be 12 to 18 degrees higher than this average for some parts of England and Wales.

While we might expect temperatures to get into the low 30s during a normal summer, anything higher than that is more unusual so to be forecasting the high 30s, even 40C over a large area of England is unprecedented and a historic day for UK weather.

Flights have been halted at the RAF's Brize Norton airfield in Oxfordshire.

“During this period of extreme temperature flight safety remains our top priority, so aircraft are using alternative airfields in line with a long established plan," an RAF spokesperson said.

They added that none of its operations had been affected by the closure.

Luton airport near London has also suspended its flights due to the hot weather.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for missing three Cobra meetings on the heatwave.

Johnson was pictured in a fighter jet at the Farnborough Airshow in Hampshire this morning, while a Cobra meeting was scheduled to take place in the afternoon.

In an urgent question in the House of Commons, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas asked how many Cobra meetings the Prime Minister has missed and why, adding that the government was utterly unprepared for the heatwave.

"These brutal temperatures pose a very real threat to life and infrastructure," she said, adding that the government had turned up "with a watering can when what we need is a giant fire hose."

But Cabinet Office minister Kit Malthouse rejected the criticism: "It's literally my job as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to chair Cobra... and then to brief the prime minister accordingly - which I did yesterday morning at 8am."

He added that he was confident that the guidance and support needed in schools, hospitals and police forces was "working its way out through the system" and "standing up well."

Mark Hutchings
Wales reporter

The record stood for 32 years and then tumbled twice in a matter of hours.

The Met Office say provisional figures show the highest temperature on record in Wales has now risen to 37.1 C in Hawarden in Flintshire.

Hawarden reclaimed its unenviable top hot-spot and surpassed its previous maximum temperature by nearly two degrees. Back in August 1990, it set the then record of 35.2C.

For a short time earlier in the day, Gogerddan near Aberystwyth was, provisionally, the hottest place ever seen in Wales - at 35.2C – but it’s a sign of today’s extremes that the record was uncomfortably passed rather swiftly.

Spare a thought for the staff at the Chocks Away Diner in Hawarden.

Michael Jennings works in the kitchen. "It can be really unbearable. You can feel giddy and dizzy with the temperature, but it’s all down to controlling your body temperature, your fluid levels and not getting dehydrated," he tells me.

Could the record be beaten again before the day is out?

James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent, BBC News

Our bodies strive to keep a core temperature of about 37.5C whether we're in a snowstorm or a heatwave.

But as the weather gets hotter, the body has to work harder to keep its core temperature down.

Image source, .

Old age or some long-term conditions, such as heart disease, can leave people less able to cope with the strain heat puts on the body.

Diabetes can make the body lose water more quickly and some complications of the disease can alter blood vessels and the ability to sweat.

Children and those who are less mobile may also be more vulnerable. Brain diseases, such as dementia, can also leave people unaware of the heat or unable to do anything about it.

You can read more on the dangers of heat and what to do about them here.

Temperatures have topped 38C in the heatwave in England. The Met Office said the hottest place at 4pm was Santon Downham, Suffolk, where the mercury hit 38.1C.

Meanwhile, Wales has already provisionally recorded its hottest day on record, with the temperature reaching 37.1C Hawarden in Flintshire.

BBC Weather's Matt Taylor shows us the extent of the heatwave today and what to watch out for tomorrow.

Hugh Pym
BBC News Health Editor

People developing health problems because of the heat could experience them days after the start of this week and this could mean hospital admissions continue for a week or more.

Dr Ruth Charlton, chief medical officer, at Epsom and St Helier Hospitals Group in south-west London told the BBC: “We very often see the impact of heat on long term conditions lasts for many days even after the temperature has dropped - we could continue to see the impact for 10-14 days”.

Flights at Luton airport near London have been suspended because of a problem with the runway caused by the heat, the airport says.

"Following today's high temperatures, a surface defect was identified on the runway," it wrote in a tweet.

"Engineers were called immediately to site and repair works are currently in progress to resume operations as soon as possible."

Aerial footage showed workers trying to repair the issue. Luton only has one runway.

The village of Hawarden in Flintshire has recorded a temperature of 37.1C (98F), the Met Office says, external.

It is the highest air temperature ever recorded in Wales, it adds.

Earlier in the day the Met Office reported that Gogerddan in Ceredigion had reached 35.3C (95F), surpassing Wales' previous hottest temperature ever recorded of 35.2C in Hawarden, Flintshire in 1990.

How do you keep pets cool?published at 16:25 British Summer Time 18 July 2022

16:25 BST 18 July 2022

Tom Edgington
BBC Reality Check

Image source, Getty Images

Ella, 24, in Nottingham, asks how pet owners can ensure their pets are kept cool while owners are at work.

Just like humans, animals can suffer from heatstroke if exposed to hot temperatures for too long.

The RSPCA says pets should never be left in cars, conservatories, outbuildings or caravans on a warm day, even if it's just for a short while.

To keep them safe, it says:

• Make sure they have shade
• Give them constant access to fresh water
• Put ice cubes in their water bowl
• Give them damp towels to lie on

Read more: How to keep pets cool in hot weather

Danny Savage
North of England correspondent

Doncaster is a busy station on the East Coast Mainline. This afternoon every service was either cancelled or delayed. Speed restrictions are in force because of the heat.

How slow are the trains going? “Sixty miles an hour with a few 20s thrown in”, was how one passing guard on a train heading to London summed it up to me.

With tomorrow's forecast set to be even hotter, LNER has cancelled all services south of Leeds and York on Tuesday. There will be no link to London from Yorkshire.

Unprecedented is how one northern based forecaster describes conditions in part of the country that usually misses the hottest weather. The expectation is that temperature records in northern England will be smashed tomorrow.

Image source, Reuters

During the hot weather, it can be easy to overheat. Temperatures of 40C can make it difficult to keep the body at its ideal 37C.

The advice - be sensible and slow down to stay cool.

While heat exhaustion is not usually serious, as long as you can cool yourself down, heatstroke is a medical emergency.

Dr Thomas Waite, deputy chief medical officer for England, has been telling the BBC what to look out for and what to do.

He says the warning signs of heat exhaustion, include dizziness, muscle cramps, and sometimes nausea, vomiting and excessive sweating,

Waite says the best way to help someone with these symptoms is to move them to a cool place, get them to lie down, drink plenty of water and cool their skin.

Usually in that sort of situation people will "improve in about 30 minutes", he says.

Waite says these symptoms are different to those of heat stroke.

He says with heat stroke people can become very, very hot and dry, stop sweating, their temperature might rise above 40 degrees, they might become confused and even sometimes have seizures.

With symptoms such as these Waite urges people to phone 999.

Image source, Getty Images

The extreme heat is creating an "unprecedented peak demand" for water, according to Water UK.

The industry body says the south of England is seeing the biggest surge, but that "pretty much all companies are seeing elevated demand at the moment".

Andrew Tucker of Thames Water is warning of huge pressure on supplies as the mercury rises.

"We want people to stay hydrated, we want people to look after their health, particularly vulnerable customers, but please be careful with any non-essential water use," he told BBC News.

"At the moment we’re seeing record levels of demand, in the order of 20 or 30% more water across the board."

"What that means, is that in some cases the demand for water is actually outstripping our ability to abstract, treat and pump water into homes and businesses."

Robbie Wojciechowski
Education reporter, BBC News

Image source, Simon Kidwell

Schools haven’t been ordered to close in the heat, but the government has asked school leaders to take steps to ensure pupils feel safe and comfortable.

Some schools have rearranged sports days or let their students wear their PE kit. But some schools have gone one step further.

Ovens have been banned, external in food technology lessons at King Charles I Primary School in Worcestershire, while Burnopfield Primary School in Durham told us they brought in an ice cream van to hand out free freezing treats to all pupils.

Hartford Manor Primary School and Nursery in Cheshire has taken hot food off the lunchtime menu today - and catering staff have been given cooling neck fans to wear.

Image source, Simon Kidwell

Local businesses have been stepping into action to help schools too. Haybridge Secondary School in Worcestershire was given car-loads of bottles to hand out in classrooms.