Gyms to dial down air-con to tackle soaring energy bills

FITNESS fanatics will feel the heat of soaring energy prices this summer as gym operators restrict cooling to ease the strain on their costs.

The budget chain Puregym said it was redoubling efforts to cut its energy use amid expectations gas and electricity prices will remain high for many months to come. The company is the UK’S largest private gym operator, with more than 500 sites across Europe.

Puregym has agreed fixed prices for much of its utilities until next year, but chief executive Humphrey Cobbold said the company was “working very hard to be in as good a position as we can when those come off ”, and figuring out how to take more control of heating and lighting across its estate.

Mr Cobbold said: “If you’ve got one big warehouse or factory, you can tell what’s on and off. But for us, it’s much harder. We’ve got sites in Inverness, we’ve got sites down in Plymouth, we’ve got sites in Andover, and it’s hard to know what’s going on everywhere.”

As part of energy-management plans, which had been put on pause during the pandemic, Mr Cobbold said Puregym was looking at systems to make it easier to control temperatures in gyms.

“I’m sure everyone has been to a gym where they go in and the studio is too hot, so someone puts the air conditioning on full blast and then later, somebody else walks in and it’s freezing and so they turn the air-con off,” he added.

“That’s very inefficient. There are systems that allow you to take more control of that, and some of our sites have those properly installed but by no means all of them.

Puregym’s efforts to bring energy

‘If you’ve got one big warehouse or factory, you can tell what’s on and off. But for us, it’s much harder’

use down comes weeks after the UK trade body for gyms and fitness centres, ukactive, warned some businesses were facing an 150pc increase in energy bills.

The sector is estimated to be paying between £1bn and £1.25bn on energy bills this year, compared with £500m in 2019. The rise has hit those with swimming pools hardest, with hundreds at risk of closure because they cannot afford to heat the water.

Puregym is currently in the middle of a major expansion, after it secured £300m in investment from the private equity firm KKR earlier this year. It scrapped plans to list in London amid ongoing market volatility last year.