A Somerset council has voted for the second time in as many months to spend more money on making its leisure facilities greener.

South Somerset District Council pledged to decarbonise its existing leisure centres as part of a response to climate change, having declared a climate emergency in 2019.

The council allocated funding to pay for these improvements in 2021, alongside central government grants through the public sector decarbonisation scheme (PSDS) which have to be spent in full by June 30, 2022.

Just over a month after the council’s district executive committee voted to provide an extra £1.6M for the project, the full council agreed on Thursday evening (June 18) to provide just under £1.3M on top of this to ensure work can be completed.

Freedom Leisure currently runs several leisure centres on the council’s behalf as part of a 15-year deal which runs to 2036.

This includes the recently-completed Chard Leisure Centre, which opened its doors in November 2021 and has been built to a high environmental standard – meaning no retrofitting is currently needed.

The other three centres, which will need decarbonising, are Wincanton Sports Centre in Wincanton, Goldenstones Leisure Centre and Westlands Sports and Leisure Centre (the latter both being located in Yeovil).

Each of these three facilities is being fitted with solar panels and air source heat pumps, which the council estimates will save around 435 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year – the equivalent of taking 229 cars off the road.

Councillor Sarah Dyke told the full council in Yeovil on Thursday evening (June 19) that the request for extra funding resulted from time delays rather than rising costs of labour and materials.

She said: “The overall cost of delivering the programme has not changed since the report in May.

“What has changed, however, is due to a design issue with the air source heat pumps, the delivery programme has slipped just a little bit, meaning more of the work will be completed and invoiced after June 30.

“In addition, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that we’ll be able to pay for an upgrade to the electrical supplies for the centre before the end of June.”

The council committed nearly £6.3M in its capital budget of February 2021 towards decarbonisation projects – of which £2.8M was allocated for projects which fall under the PSDS remit (in the event of grant funding not being available), with the remainder being for other capital projects.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) had provided up to £3,993,000 through the PSDS, which would have reduced the overall amount of borrowing the council would have needed to undertake.

However, the council will not be able to spend all of this money before the June 30 deadline – and BEIS officials have turned down repeated requests for the deadline to be extended until the council’s predicted completion date of September.

In voting the original increase in May, the council accepted in principle that the work in Wincanton would run on beyond the June deadline, to prevent pupils at the neighbouring King Arthur’s Community School from being disrupted while sitting their GCSE exams.

To prevent all the existing projects from being abandoned halfway through, the council needs to provide an additional £1,276,245, funded through its capital programme.

Any of this additional funding which ends up not being needed will be returned.

Councillor Peter Seib said the government’s lack of flexibility was “really unfortunate” but the projects had to be completed to achieve long-term benefits for residents and the environment.

He said: “We have to look at the good side of this. This does actually lock-in, forever, the energy savings that result from decarbonisation.

“I just think we need to bite the bullet and get on with this.”

The committee voted in favour of providing the additional funding by 33 votes to none, with two abstentions.