With many of the UK’s leisure buildings dating back to the 1970s, finding innovative ways to reduce their carbon footprint and cut energy costs has never been more vital.
This is especially true for swimming pools, which are energy-intensive and expensive to operate.
As part of an initiative to make swimming more sustainable, money from Sport England’s £63 million Swimming Pool Support Fund (SPSF) was distributed to more than 300 pools and leisure centres at the start of 2024 to support energy efficiency projects.
As part of the programme, environmental audits were undertaken on the centres by Right Directions, the health, safety and quality management company.
Environmental culture
The aim was to ensure facilities had an environmental management culture in place, as well as policies and procedures to safeguard their long-term viability, contributing to improvements in the sector’s overall sustainability.
Caroline Constantine, MD of Right Directions says the results of the audit were unexpected: “The top sites scored better than we’d predicted and the lowest performed less well,” she says. “We anticipated scores between 40 and 80 per cent, but they were extremely wide ranging, from the teens through to the 90s…
“Understandably, organisations where designated staff have environmental management responsibilities generally scored higher,” she explained, “however, many had never been through an environmental audit, so the questions were new to them and the process gave them the opportunity to learn what they needed to change to be more sustainable and cut their energy bills.”
The audit identified areas of competence and those that need improvement: “The highest-scoring questions related to health, safety and general maintenance procedures,” notes Constantine. “These are areas where we would expect operators to score well.”
Areas requiring attention mainly related to measures managers could action themselves, “although many aren’t,” said Constantine. The exception to this was ‘discharge consent’ – where operators require a permit to release waste water.
Additional desk-based review
The lowest 150 performing sites have now undergone a further review – this time, desk-based – and shown a significant increase in scores, following actions taken based on the initial feedback.
“The opportunity for facilities to improve in the follow-up review is considerable, as the majority of areas requiring change – such as optimising lighting levels – don’t need significant spend ,” says Constantine. “In one leisure centre, the natural light was already the recommended 300 Lux, yet despite this, all the lights were switched on, taking the meter reading to 960 Lux.”
Back to school
|“We also saw an opportunity for operators to improve quality management systems generally,” adds Constantine. “Getting teams on board through awareness training is an easy win, but it’s not happening enough, with many staff not receiving training, so this only scored 52 per cent as a result.
“However, this isn’t just about how lack of staff training is affecting the bottom line, it’s about staff understanding the impact their actions have on the planet and how we can all make a difference,” she explains.
“Environmental achievements also weren’t being recognised, meaning there wasn’t a culture of staff logging and reviewing their positive environmental actions,” she said.
“By officially recognising these achievements internally, operators can demonstrate their actions to staff, to stakeholders and to the public, which improves overall experience and satisfaction.”
The question ‘are public awareness initiatives in place?’ only scored 50 per cent, but is – according to Constantine – another easy win: “If you don’t tell staff and customers you’re taking the environment seriously, there’s no pressure for them to follow suit,” she explains.
