The problem hiding in plain sight

If Britain had a national sport, it would be designing brilliant systems that accidentally exclude the people who need them most.

We did it with rail.
We did it with broadband.
We did it with buses.
And now, unless we are very awake, we are about to do it with heat.

Because Heat Network Zones are not lines on a map. They are destiny.

They decide who gets clean, stable, affordable warmth and who stays cold, mouldy and permanently one boiler failure away from crisis.

And the really awkward truth?

The map is already drifting in the wrong direction.

Not because anyone is incompetent or cruel. But because the incentives are quietly nudging every planner, consultant and developer toward the same conclusion:

“Pick the warm, convenient buildings, the ones that behave.”

Which is perfectly rational.

And perfectly disastrous.

The thing nobody wants to say about zoning

Right now, heat zones are being drawn like a procurement bingo card:

Step 1: Find a juicy anchor load.
Step 2: Draw a circle around it.
Step 3: Pray it still works in 2035.

Hospitals? Lovely.
Universities? Yes please.
Glassy office blocks? Absolutely.

But the places that most need stable, affordable heat?

Tower blocks where condensation grows its own personality.
Homes where winter feels like a second job.
Estates where heating bills resemble hostage negotiations.
Flats where a broken boiler is a public health emergency.

These places rarely make the map.

Not because they are not important but because the algorithm quietly punishes anything not shiny, simple or financially flattering.

If heat networks were restaurants, we are currently reserving tables for people who already ate and telling everyone else to come back after the next Spending Review.

The big idea we have been circling without naming

Here it is. The one line the whole sector needs to tattoo on the inside of its eyelids:

Heat zoning is not an engineering exercise. It is a fairness exercise disguised as one.

Or, even simpler:

The map is the policy. If you design the map wrong, you design inequality.

Once you see this, you cannot un-see it.

A zone boundary is a decision about who benefits and who waits.
Which neighbourhood stabilises bills and which stays in fuel poverty.
Which homes get future proof heat and which get an apology.

This is not technical.
This is constitutional.

Britain does not have a heat shortage. It has a heat circulation problem.

Waste heat pours out of data centres like a free winter.
Factories vent warmth into cold air because no one asked them not to.
Swimming pools donate megawatts to the sky like a charity.
Hospitals warm up pigeons more reliably than the street next door.

Heat is abundant. It just does not flow to the people who need it.

Which makes the current zoning bias even stranger.

We are designing the plumbing of national decarbonisation but ignoring the rooms where the leaks actually are.

Where the current approach quietly goes wrong

Policy modelling overwhelmingly favours anchor loads with “certainty”.

In plain English: buildings with CFOs and shiny maintenance logs.

That means:

• low risk estates get zoned
• high need communities get sidelined
• developers follow the path of least resistance
• social housing gets orphaned
• and the map ends up matching the United Kingdom fuel poverty map

Not because anyone wants that. But because the incentives nudge everyone toward convenience over consequence.

We have optimised the system for the things that are easiest to measure, not the things that actually matter.

The stakes, not in theory, in real life

A mother drying her child’s school uniform on radiators because the flat is too damp.

A family paying £240 a month to stay cold.

A landlord wanting to retrofit a whole estate, except the zone line cuts the site in half.

A hospital throwing away enough heat to warm four thousand homes, next to four thousand cold homes.

This is why zoning matters.

It decides whether the 3.2 million fuel poor households in England get help or get left waiting for a future strategy.

The holy S*** moment

Here it is:

Heat zoning is the biggest stealth redistribution of power, comfort and cost in Britain today.

And almost no one realises it.

We are about to redraw the country’s thermal map in a way that silently decides who gets comfort and who gets cold and almost no one is treating it like the giant redistribution mechanism it actually is.

If we get it right, warmth becomes the most reliable form of social infrastructure we’ve ever built.

If we get it wrong, Britain will spend generations wondering why the people who needed help most were left standing outside the map.

Five shifts that turn heat networks into real public infrastructure

Think of this as the five grown up design shifts.

1. Make fairness a zoning criterion, not a footnote

If zoning does not reward inclusion, it will reward avoidance. Simple, predictable, fatal.

2. Design zones around communities and heat flows, not convenient anchor buildings

Anchor loads stabilise networks. Communities justify them. Map estates, schools, tower blocks and real thermal relationships, not abstract polygons.

3. Create market signals that reward inclusion, not avoidance

If we pay developers more for connecting shiny buildings than for reducing fuel poverty, we already know what will happen. We need incentives that flip the logic.

4. Mandate whole system value in cost benefit assessments

Warm homes reduce NHS costs. Stable temperatures reduce social care demand. Dry walls reduce mould claims and emergency maintenance. If you do not count this value, you design the wrong system.

5. Put social housing at the centre, not the edge, of heat investment

Every country that cracked heat networks, from Denmark to the Netherlands to Sweden, started with social housing. Britain keeps leaving it for later. Later never comes.

What we should be asking now

The old question was: “Where should the pipes go?”

The real question is: “Who deserves warmth first?”

And the answer cannot be “whoever looks good in the financial model”.

The buildable idea

Forget complexity. Forget political fairy tales. Forget hoping for hydrogen to parachute in and rescue us.

Here is the boring, brilliant, undeniably British solution:

Design heat like a public good, not a procurement puzzle.

Do that and five things happen:

1. Zones stop being lines and start being lifelines
They reflect how people actually live, not how spreadsheets prefer them to.

2. Developers start competing on fairness, not convenience
If the prize is inclusive design, you get inclusive design.

3. System flows beat building boundaries
Heat stops dying in silos. It starts travelling where it is needed.

4. Costs stabilise because the system is built on real life logic
Not on the fantasy that anchor loads never change or that wholesale electricity prices behave politely.

5. Heat finally does the thing it was always meant to do
Help people live well. Help places thrive. Help the country breathe easier.

The summary no one asked for, but everyone needs

Heat zoning is about to redraw Britain’s thermal map for the next thirty to fifty years.

This is our one shot to design warmth as a right, not a reward.

A chance to build a system where:

• the coldest homes go first
• the hardest buildings get help
• fairness is built in, not bolted on
• and heat finally behaves like infrastructure, not luck

We are not designing pipes. We are designing futures.

And the only real question left is:

Will we design them for convenience, or for the people wearing coats indoors?

One option builds a network. The other builds a country worth living in.