Today in committee I learned of  a simple step that local authorities (and private gyms!) can take to save money and energy in leisure centres.

Two simple words: pool covers.

If you don’t cover your swimming pools at night, then chemicals leak out of the pool via evaporation.  So too does heat from the pool. Leisure centres pay a small fortune in heating swimming pools (and indeed one major thing you can do to reduce leisure centre bills is drop the temperature of the water by just one degree C).

In Nottingham, apparently most of the pools aren’t covered, and many of the leisure centres have old, unworking covers.  It’s taken a little longer than it should do to get agreement to replace the covers, but once they’re in place, it should make a big difference with such a little change.