More than £1.6 million is to be spent to ‘decarbonise’ four leisure centres in Cherwell district.
The council has secured £1.1m through the Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), to which it will add £560,911 from existing capital budgets, to pay for decarbonisation at Spiceball and Woodgreen leisure centres and at Stratfield Brake and North Oxfordshire Academy sports pavilions.
Works will include replacing heating systems with low-carbon alternatives, such as air-source heat pumps and implementing other efficiency measures including insulation.
Cllr Tom Beckett, portfolio holder for greener communities, said: “This council is committed to addressing climate change head-on. Since we declared a climate emergency in 2019, we’ve taken big strides towards our goal of reaching net zero by 2030, and I am delighted that we are taking this proactive approach to winning Government grants.
“While we’ve invested before in decarbonisation measures at our leisure centres, there’s still more to be done to reach our carbon net zero ambitions. This largely grant-funded latest round of investment will substantially reduce our energy use and carbon footprint.
“This will allow residents’ trips to the gym or swimming pool to feel both good for personal health and planetary health.”
The majority of the works are expected to be completed by March 2026.
Image: Entrance to Spiceball Leisure Centre, Banbury by Jaggery, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
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