Businesses across Kent have faced another week of heatwave impact
While some have increased sales, others are being left sweltering
As we've been experiencing more hot weather this week, we're checking in with Kent businesses about how they're coping.
On Thursday morning, the Met Office expanded its amber warning for “extreme heat” to cover more of England, as it warned some of the highest temperatures could be seen in the Midlands and western areas.
The latest provisional figures mean that 2026 has seen four days at or above 36C, the most days in a single year to meet that threshold.
Most Britons want to see laws on maximum workplace temperature limits, polling suggests, as parts of the UK battle more extreme heat.
A YouGov survey of more than 2,000 UK adults for Friends of the Earth found almost four-fifths (79%) of those quizzed supported the Government introducing a legal maximum temperature for workplaces.
There are no laws for minimum or maximum indoor working temperatures, and while guidance exists for minimum temperatures in workplaces there is none for maximum temperatures – an increasing risk as climate change fuels more extreme heat.
The high level of support for legal maximum workplace temperatures comes in the midst of the fifth heatwave of the summer, with an amber warning for extreme heat issued for Thursday as the thermometer looks set to rise to as high as 38C in some parts of England.
Alex Greig, owner of Fuggles Beer Cafe, has been telling us about the issues heat can bring to small businesses:
"It's lovely to have such nice weather and sustained sun, but it's getting a little bit much for day-to-day life. We're not a hot country like Spain or Italy, we're not we're not so tough for this kind of weather to be honest.
"It's horrible to work in, particularly if you don't have any air conditioning.
"At Fuggles, we've definitely seen an uptick on particularly hot days with customers enjoying the air conditioning.
"But even that struggles in this heat, everything struggles.
"It costs more to run, it uses more energy and ironically it's just causing more damage to the environment.
"We're making the planet hotter, it's just going round in circles with the situation.
He added that for some smaller businesses, installing infrastructure to save water or use air conditioning also wasn't financially viable.