News: Leisure Connection goes Green

Leisure Connection Corporate

03 March 2008

Leisure Connection, the leading public access facility management company has been trialing a number of initiatives aiming to decrease the energy and water consumption throughout their estate of more than 70 centres.

The sports and leisure sector consumes approximately £700M of energy per annum overall.  Just by making a 10% improvement in the management of energy use, UK leisure facilities could save up to £70M each year and reduce carbon emissions by hundreds of thousands of tonnes.

Keen to reduce their carbon footprint, Leisure Connection has been working with the Carbon Trust to devise and implement a number of energy saving programmes.  A six month trial in Reading has indicated a saving of more than 15% on all utilities through increased efficiency and automation. 

The reason this was so successful is that "investment was made in technology which took control of the environment and removed manual operation", says Leisure Connection's Paul Bailey, Head of Property Services. "Alongside a campaign to raise awareness of the energy issues that exist at centre level, the strategy was to add, automate and optimise environmental controls so that energy demand was closely controlled by use and occupancy.  We have also taken advantage of opportunities to reduce speeds of main motors, remove competing heating and cooling systems, insulating, using re-lamping as an opportunity to install energy efficient lighting and daylight/occupancy controls.  We have also educated our teams to use their own initiative when it comes to managing our energy more efficiently - by simply turning things off when not required, energy is being saved. Fundamental to this has been our ability to accurately measure and target energy use."

"Other devices such as water saving shower heads were installed and showed good savings in water and the gas to heat it, without compromising the quality of our showers.  We are now exploring various options on how we can implement and roll out this philosophy across the estate," continues Paul. 

Many of the lessons learnt and the successes of this trial are now being implemented throughout all sites and Leisure Connection has appointed Energy Champions to ensure that they are operated as energy efficiently as possible by instilling awareness and good housekeeping. 

A second trial in St Albans has seen a liquid pool cover tested, which activates once the surface of the pool is calm and quiet and has shown savings which recover the monthly cost of the consumable liquid within the first week of each month- perfect for off-peak times when the pool is empty for long periods. 

Graham Farrant, Chief Executive of Leisure Connection commented:  "These trials have been great and we and our clients are pleased with the results.  Being energy efficient is extremely important to our sector as our carbon footprint is so large.  Reducing carbon emissions and being energy efficient is not only good for the environment but good for reducing overheads too.  We are now looking at how we can implement these plans further afield across our entire estate to ensure that all of our clients are benefiting from the results of our trials."

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