For decades, people in the UK tended to view air conditioning as something that belonged elsewhere. It was associated with office buildings, hotels and hotter countries rather than their own homes. But as summers become warmer and heatwaves more frequent, that picture is beginning to change.

Colleagues and I analysed data from the English Housing Survey, a nationally representative sample of about 16,000 households. This shows that air conditioning remains relatively uncommon, with just 4.3% of households using it in summer. That’s far below countries such as the US (nearly 90%) and Australia (around 75%).

Yet beneath this modest national average lies a far more revealing picture. Air conditioning is not spreading evenly across society. Instead, England is beginning to develop a cooling divide, one in which access to protection from extreme heat increasingly depends on where people live, how much they earn and the type of home they occupy.

During in-depth interviews we conducted with air conditioning users in the UK, people rarely described it as a luxury. Instead, they spoke about trying to sleep through hot nights, remain productive while working the next day, or protect babies or elderly relatives from dangerously high temperatures.

The geography of this emerging divide is immediately apparent. London........

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