AC for Snowsfields Primary School

Aim

We want to install AC at Snowsfields Primary this summer. Government won't act. Help us get there.

Update: we have revised our approach and reduced our target to £15,000.

After further research, we have decided to focus on portable air conditioning units rather than a fixed installation. Portable units are significantly cheaper and can be moved between classrooms as needed, but they work differently to fixed systems: cooling capacity is measured in BTU and a room the size of a typical Snowsfields classroom (roughly 7m x 8m x 5m) requires around 40,000 BTU to cool effectively. The maximum capacity of a portable unit is around 14,000-16,000 BTU, which means we need at least two units per room to make a meaningful difference. It will not bring the temperature all the way down to a comfortable 22°C, but it will get part of the way there, which is considerably better than nothing.

At approximately £600 per unit, two units per room across nine classrooms comes to 18 units in total. We will buy them room by room as the money comes in, starting with the worst-affected classrooms. Every £1,200 raised means one more room that is bearable to work and learn in next summer.

The original £35,000 target was based on fixed installation costs. This approach is faster, cheaper, and gets cooling into classrooms as soon as possible.

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We are parents of children at Snowsfields Primary School in Bermondsey. Last week, the temperature inside classrooms reached dangerous levels. Parents were offered the choice of collecting their children at 1:30pm. Teachers and support staff had no such option. They worked full days in sealed Victorian classrooms with no air conditioning and windows that don't open, because the school stayed open, as it should, because working parents need it to.

Climate change means this will happen every summer. The UK has no legally enforceable maximum workplace temperature, so the school has no legal lever to demand action and no budget to fix it itself. We have written to our MP Neil Coyle and to Councillor Jasmine Ali at Southwark Council. We are not holding our breath.

So we are doing it ourselves.

The summer holidays are the single best window to install air conditioning in a working school. No disruption to lessons, no children on site, no lost learning time. If we raise the funds before the end of term, the work can be done in July and August and the school reopens in September with cooling in place, ready for the next heatwave, which will come.

Every penny raised goes directly towards the purchase and installation of air conditioning units in the classrooms most severely affected.

If we wait for the government, we will be having this conversation again next summer and the one after that.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 16th September 2026 at 7:43pm