For the first time, government annual reports reveal how climate risks could affect a wide range of public services including transport, health and prisons.
The report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has examined Labour’s response to climate-related adversities and the strength of its sustainability reporting.
Train companies already flag flooding, high winds and landslides leading to delayed and cancelled services.
The report sates that financial losses due to climate change will rise in future, with the potential for some routes to become financially unviable or inoperable later this century in the worst-case scenario.
Meanwhile, 89% of prisons were said to be at high risk of flooding and 71% at high risk of overheating.
Gareth Davies, Head of the NAO, said: “UK public services will need to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Parliament needs clear information on the resilience of infrastructure, service provision and finances to climate change, and on how these risks are being managed.”
The NAO report concluded central government bodies took different approaches to assessing and reporting climate-related risks. But many bodies identified similar risks such as flooding and overheating.
However, very few explained fully what the risks could mean for services, future plans and finances. And most disclosures did not include enough targets or measures for readers to judge how effectively bodies were managing risk.
In response to the report, the Environmental Audit Committee Chair, Toby Perkins MP said there is still much more for the government to do.
He said: “As the report states, most of government is still at an early stage of its understanding. But I was alarmed to read that only a third of the central government bodies that identified climate change as a material issue assessed its impact on their work.
“This simply isn’t good enough; the government must rapidly scale up efforts to assess and disclose climate-related risks.”
Overall, the NAO found reporting on climate-risk governance and management improved in 2025-2026 compared with 2024-2025.
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