The UK is worryingly ill-prepared for worsening climate impacts such as floods and heatwaves, at the same time as an already "substantial gap" between emissions goals and policy action is widening. That is the stark warning today from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), as the government's official advisors delivered a damning assessment on Ministers' climate strategies to date.

Further changes to the climate are inevitable regardless of how quickly the world reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and many of the impacts of those changes are already being felt in the UK today, the climate advisory body said.

Yet despite the urgent need to address escalating climate risks, the CCC concluded action to prepare the UK's homes, businesses, and natural environment for a warming world are "even less ambitious" than they were a decade ago.

Of the 33 sectors of the UK economy assessed by the CCC "none show good progress when it comes to managing climate risk" and the government has "failed to increase adaptation policy ambition and implementation" in plans it is legally required to deliver under the Climate Change Act 2008.

It said the government needed to urgently improve its climate resilience and adaptation plans, recommending it take steps to protect people from the dangerous effects of overheating in homes, schools and hospitals by, for example, reviewing current building regulations.

It should also implement a flood strategy drawn up by the Environment Agency, incentivise farmers to improve soil health and protect the environment, set goals to cut water consumption, and force companies to disclose the financial risks posed to their businesses from climate change, the CCC said.

But while it would be prudent to prepare the UK for global warming of around 4C above industrial levels, the CCC said there was "little evidence of adaptation planning for even 2C".

CCC chair Lord Deben suggested climate change adaptation preparations were being "run by the government like Dad's Army", in reference to the popular BBC sitcom set during the Second World War featuring a group of incompetent members of the Home Guard.

"It's like trying to make do and mend, which is what Dad's Army was," he explained. "We really aren't in a position to do that - we can't make do and mend. We've actually got to have a grand plan that deals with this, because the sort of the incidents that we are likely to deal with are enormously tough."

It comes after scorching heat in Europe recently saw temperatures hit the highest on record in France at over 45C, while settlements around the UK coast such as Fairborne in Wales are facing increasing threats from coastal erosion due to rising sea levels.

Yet Lord Deben warned the UK government "isn't even beginning to meet the policy it itself has written".

"We can't possibly go on with this ramshackle system, which lays huge pressure on individuals who are really reacting enormously well," he said. "But the system is just not fit for purpose. It doesn't begin to face the issues."

Deben also aimed criticism at parts of the business community, reserving particularly sharp words for the house-building sector. "It is outrageous that the housebuilders have done absolutely nothing as far as I can see to ready the houses they are building now [for worsening climate impacts," he said.

The CCC's conclusions came in its latest assessment of UK's progress on climate adaptation and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which will be published today. The report also shows policies needed to decarbonise the economy towards meeting an 80 per cent cut in emissions by mid-century, let alone the newly adopted net zero goal, are sorely lacking.

As the government conceded in April, the UK is currently off-track towards meeting both the fourth and fifth carbon budgets covering the mid-2020s to early 2030s period, yet the gap between ambition and policy action is currently widening.

Moreover, greenhouse gas inventory changes have led to an increase in the projection of future UK emissions which has also outweighed the impact of new policies, making the net zero target even harder to reach, it added.

Over the past year, the government has delivered just one of the 25 critical policies recommended by the CCC last summer in order to get the UK's emissions reduction back on track. That policy was the Chancellor's announcement in March that from 2025 all new homes built must not use fossil fuel heating.

But otherwise, the foundations laid out in 2017's Clean Growth Strategy have not been developed into a coordinated approach, and efforts have been isolated to single departments on Whitehall or "progressed too slowly", the CCC concluded.

It therefore called on the government to embed net zero policy across all parts of government and devolved administrations. In particular, it urged the Departments for Transport and Housing to do much more to prioritise emissions reduction, recommending a fossil fuel car ban by 2035 at the latest, as well as more stringent buildings standards and support for home retrofits.

The situation is urgent because although UK emissions fell by two per cent last year, this progress is set to slow as benefits from moving away from coal power start to dry up, requiring more action from other parts of the economy.

To do that, policies need to be much more "business-friendly", said the Committee's CEO Chris Stark.

"Most of the work that is done - although policy will be involved - the heavy lifting will be done by businesses here in the UK, and that means policies need to be framed in such a way that they will respond in the right way," he said.

The UK is bidding to host the international UN COP climate summit next year, and Stark warned this meant the UK had a window of 12-18 months to put a proper policy plan in place.

"And if we do not see that, then I fear the government will be embarrassed when it comes to hosting COP next year," he said.

The government is expected to release a series of policy papers later this year, including an Energy White Paper, as well as a new Agriculture Bill and an Environment Bill, all of which it said may contain some more detailed policies to reduce emissions.

It has consistently argued it is optimistic that advances in clean technologies and planned new policies as part of its Clean Growth Strategy will allow it to meet its future carbon budgets. But the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) also today conceded "there is more to do and legislating for net zero will help to drive further action".

"We'll set out plans in the coming months to tackle emissions from aviation, heat, energy and transport as well further measures to protect the environment from extreme weather including flood protection, tree planting and peatland management," a BEIS spokesperson said.

Rachel Reeves, chair of the BEIS Select Committee of MPs said the onus was on the government to come forward with new measures as quickly as possible.

"The government's recent commitment to reducing the UK's carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 was welcome but targets are meaningless if not matched by concrete action," she said in a statement. "This latest CCC report shows the government has failed dismally to back up its rhetoric with ambitious policies which deliver the cuts in emissions the UK needs to achieve.

"Getting to net-zero requires will require action across all parts of Government and our economy. Yet, in areas such as electric vehicles, carbon capture and storage, and renewable energy, we have seen the government has been too lacking in the ambition and political will to deliver the concrete policies necessary to make an impact. The costs of inaction, for our economy, for our environment, and for our health, are too great for the UK government to lag behind."

The progress report comes at a key time in the UK's political calendar, with the Conservative Party shortly to choose a new Prime Minister who will be under pressure to deliver a solution to Brexit as well as a strong set of policies to realise the net zero target, which all candidates have backed.

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, offered an even more stark assessment of the government's record.

"This is a truly brutal reality check on the government's current progress in tackling the climate emergency," he said. "It paints the government as a sleeper who's woken up, seen the house is on fire, raised the alarm and gone straight back to sleep. 

"Having a world-leading target is not enough, it needs to be accompanied by policies which match the target's ambition on cars and vans, houses and offices, trains and planes. The government can't keep coasting on the carbon reductions from getting coal out of the electricity system, which was absolutely necessary but by no means sufficient. We urgently need to take the same approach to oil, gas, and every sector with significant emissions. The new prime minister really must take the government's net zero commitment and turn it into something practically meaningful."