WIRRAL Council have said reducing energy costs and damaging emissions from its buildings is “starting to produce results”.

The council has invested £350,000 on energy-efficiency measures at its Active Wirral leisure centres over the last 12 months which aims to deliver reductions in cost and energy usage.

Wirral Council recently took the award for ‘Best Innovation or Demand Management Initiative’ at the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) awards in Bristol for the collaborative work it has carried out in beginning to decarbonise its own buildings.

Leisure centres - all of which are large, multi-use spaces operating for long periods of time with air-conditioned fitness suites and some with heated swimming pools – were a focus of the project that aimed to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs associated with energy.

Excluding the street lighting network, the council’s Active Wirral facilities combined accounted for 41% of the council’s corporate electricity usage.

53% of Wirral Council’s total gas consumption and 49% of all emissions generated by electricity and gas usage came from the operation of Active Wirral leisure facilities.

Supported by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) and NW net zero hub, Wirral bid for £12m of grant funding under through the government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) to decarbonise 11 buildings.

However, due to limited funds, Wirral was allocated an initial award of around £900,000, which will allow the council to carry decarbonisation works on Landican Cemetery and Wirral Country Park to take place in the coming months.

However, the process of addressing the challenges presented by operating leisure facilities has already been started with a project aimed at delivering energy reductions across the centres was carried out thanks for a capital investment from the council of £350,000.

Actions such as installing pool covers to reduce heat loss from the swimming pools when they are not in use were an obvious way to reduce heating costs - by preventing evaporation, pool covers retain the heat generated by the pool's heating system.

Repairing solar panels, installing low flow showers and improving the awareness of energy efficiency amongst staff were other interventions, as were providing more investment for ongoing planned preventative maintenance and optimising building management systems to ensure that equipment was running as efficiently and to demand as possible.

It also achieved over one and a half times its emissions reduction target to save 335 tonnes CO2e contributing to 23 per cent of the Council’s total emissions reduction target for 2023/24.

In terms of monetary impact, the project is also on target to have the initial investment repaid in around 18 months and the forecast - if the results so far are maintained – is a cost saving of £1.23 million by 2028.

Cllr Liz Grey, Chair of the Environment, Climate Emergency and Transport Committee for Wirral Council, said: “I’d like to say well done and thank you to everyone who has played a part in this project.

“It has been a real team effort and its success isn’t just down to the investment in physical measures, it also down to increased awareness amongst staff of the importance of saving energy.”