A new pilot examining energy use across public leisure facilities has identified the potential to reduce energy demand by up to 25%, highlighting a significant opportunity to cut operating costs and carbon emissions across the sector.
The Integrated Facility Systems (IFS) pilot, has combined detailed energy consumption data with facility and customer activity data across four public leisure centres over the past 12 months.
The enhanced visibility provided by the pilot showed that approximately 26% of weekly electricity consumption, 34% of gas consumption and 32% of water consumption occurred during periods with no recorded bookings. While a proportion of this reflects essential background requirements of operating complex leisure facilities, the findings offer valuable evidence on where consumption can be optimised without affecting services or the customer experience
The pilot is being delivered through Sport England’s Moving Communities programme, driven by 4GLOBAL and Unify, alongside Community Leisure UK and Right Directions, and is intended to establish a scalable, data-led approach to reducing the cost and carbon impact of operating public leisure facilities.
Initial modelling across the pilot facilities has identified the potential for meaningful financial and carbon savings through operational changes, including:
Savings of £4m and 3,900 tonnes of potential carbon over a 10 year period across the four pilot facilities through a 20-25% reduction in utility consumption.
Multiplied across a larger sample model this could represent:*
100 sites – total savings of £117m / 115ky CO2
500 sites – total savings of £585m / 575 kt CO2
1000 sites – total savings of £1.2bn / 1,150 kt CO2
A central principle emerging from the pilot is that operators and local authorities should understand and reduce the underlying energy demand of a facility before committing significant capital to replacing plant and equipment.
Rather than immediately relying on major capital interventions, the analysis identified a series of potential operational changes that could improve the performance of existing buildings. These include better alignment of heating, ventilation and lighting with activity levels, switching off systems in unused areas, reducing overnight consumption, improving building zoning, reviewing temperature settings during periods of low use, as well as fabric insulation improvements, examining energy-intensive swimming pool processes including reheating, cleaning and backwashing.
The approach could also have implications for energy procurement savings and future capital investment, driven by reduced consumption and enhanced data.
Caroline Constantine, Managing Director at Right Directions, which conducted IFS audits at the leisure centres to ensure the data collected is as accurate as possible. She said: “Leisure facilities are complex environments and the teams operating them should play a critical role in ensuring the buildings run as efficiently as possible. Particularly exciting is the opportunity to create a repeatable approach that combines better insight with workforce development and operational best practice.”
“Our team has been working with the centres to translate the insight captured into best operational practice on the ground. We will be reviewing their progress in six months’ time following any operational changes. The learning from these pilot sites can then help the wider sector reduce costs and carbon footprint while continuing to deliver a great experience for customers.”
IFS builds on the Moving Communities approach of combining different datasets to give local authorities and operators a more complete picture of facility performance. Moving Communities already brings together facility, participation, financial, customer experience, service delivery and energy information. With IFS adding more granular utility data, this means operators can move beyond understanding simply how much energy a building consumed during a month towards understanding where it was consumed, when it was consumed and how closely that consumption aligned with customer demand.
Jack Shakespeare, Managing Director at 4GLOBAL, said:
“The real opportunity is to connect how a building is operating with how people are actually using it. When utilisation and energy data are analysed together, we can start identifying where consumption is out of step with demand and turn that insight into practical actions for operators. That creates a pathway from static energy reporting towards much more intelligent facility management, where operators can continuously understand performance, take action and measure the financial and carbon impact of those decisions.”
The four pilot facilities were deliberately selected to represent different ages, sizes, conditions and facility types, with buildings dating from the 1970’s through to 2015. Despite these differences, the analysis identified recurring opportunities to improve energy performance.
Now with this initial detail, examination of opportunities for intervention can be tested, including changes to pool plant operating procedures, reheating timings and wider plant controls.
Extending this pilot further, the development pathway includes roll out to a further 26 sites who are members of Community Leisure UK, developing Moving Communities utility benchmarks and providing regular monitoring reports and actionable insights.
Charles Johnston, Director at Unify, said:
“The next phase is to turn the collected intelligence into action, giving facility teams much clearer guidance on how to operate their buildings more efficiently, and over time, enabling building systems themselves to respond dynamically to changing demand. This creates a pathway towards genuinely intelligent leisure facilities, buildings that continuously learn from how they are being used, optimise their operation and reduce cost and carbon without compromising the customer experience.”
The findings could have wider implications for local authorities, operators and policymakers considering how to improve the financial and environmental sustainability of ageing public leisure infrastructure.
Alongside reducing day-to-day operating costs, more detailed evidence about facility performance could help inform where capital investment is most needed, which interventions are likely to deliver the greatest return and how future facilities and plant should be specified.
Emma Bernstein, Strategic Projects Lead at Sport England, said:
“Public leisure facilities play a vital role in helping people to be active, but we also know that rising operating costs and the need to reduce carbon emissions are placing increasing pressure on the long-term sustainability of these important community assets.
“These early findings demonstrate the opportunity to use better data and insight to help operators and local authorities understand how their facilities are really performing, reduce unnecessary energy demand and make better-informed decisions about where future investment can have the greatest impact.
“Sport England is committed to building on this initial pilot and growing the initiative, working with our partners and the sector to test the approach across a wider range of facilities and develop the evidence for how it could be applied at greater scale.
“Ultimately, our ambition is to help create a more financially and environmentally sustainable public leisure estate, ensuring facilities can continue to serve their communities for the long term.”
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