Leisure centre and school get £5m to go green

Funding has been approved for carbon-cutting technology at a leisure centre and school.

About £5m will be spent on replacing old gas boilers with heat pumps at Sun Lane Leisure in Wakefield and Upton Primary School in Pontefract.

Wakefield Council said solar panels would also be installed at Sun Lane, which was one of the authority's highest carbon-emitting buildings.

Funding of £3.8m has come from the government's public sector decarbonisation scheme along with £1.2m from the council.

The government initiative helps public sector bodies decarbonise their property primarily by switching older gas boilers to heat pumps as well as other energy efficiency measures.

The council initially said it would provide £460,000 of funding to support the scheme but agreed to give more due to the cost of work increasing, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

A report said the rise was due to the "complex and challenging nature of air source heat pump retrofit schemes, particularly in leisure buildings".

A third decarbonisation project planned at South Parade Primary School in Ossett would no longer be going ahead, the report said.

The council declared a climate emergency in May 2019 and issued a pledge to become a carbon neutral authority by 2030.

It is hoped the whole of the district can achieve the same goal by 2038.

Jack Hemingway, portfolio holder for environment and climate change, said although the council was putting in extra money, most of it had come from the government.

"If we didn't undertake them now with that government money, we would have to undertake the full work at full council costs in the future."

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