Littlehampton leisure centre gets the green light

Littlehampton Swimming and Sports Centre and the Arun Leisure Centre, Felpham, are benefiting from the drive to lower the leisure trust’s carbon footprint.

Inspire, which runs sporting and leisure facilities on behalf of Arun District Council, has teamed up with Brighton-based company, Blue Carbon, which helps organisations to operate in a more eco-friendly way, including using a device to cut electricity consumption.

Since Inspire took over Arun’s facilities in April, 2006, it had worked hard to become more sustainable, reducing its energy consumption by 10 per cent, said Andrew Smith, manager of the two centres. “We’ve been retro-fitting all kinds of things to try to reduce our carbon footprint.

“We’ve installed pool covers, variable speed drives in the plant rooms and voltage optimisation at both centres.

“At Inspire Littlehampton we’ve installed electrical current optimisation with Blue Carbon.

“We’ve managed to reduce the amount of energy we consume quite considerably.”

Between April, 2006, and April, 2010, Inspire spent approximately £150,000 on energy efficiency.

Blue Carbon carried out a 120-day trial, measuring electricity consumption and other factors such as the number of visitors, which revealed the Littlehampton centre’s electricity consumption was down by 6.4 per cent.

Darren Trussell, Blue Carbon’s managing director, said: “Based on total annual consumption, the reduction produces an annual saving of £2,725. This will give Inspire an anticipated return on its investment within 16 months and an annual carbon reduction of 17,761kg.”

Inspire is now considering whether to continue using the energy-saving devices.

A spokeswoman for Arun said: “We are keen to hear of Inspire’s continued efforts to ‘green’ the leisure centres. The council is always supportive of any steps to make Arun greener and reduce the district’s carbon footprint.

“As an authority, we have adopted many different ways of working over the last couple of years to practise what we preach and have been recognised nationally for our efforts.”