Exeter 'does the right thing' and delays green energy schemes

'Anything else would have been bordering on reckless'

Pressing on with a £7 million green energy project on two gas-guzzling buildings in Exeter would have been ‘bordering on reckless’, city councillors have been told.

The project to install renewable energy heating at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) and the Riverside Leisure Centre has been put on the back burner after officers concluded it couldn't be completed before a strict government deadline.

The council will apply for government cash again when the next round of grants is offered.

The ‘decarbonisation’ projects would have had to be completed by March to qualify for the funding, and a report for the executive committee said there is no prospect of the work being done within budget by then.

Appeals to the government for an extension of the deadline fell on deaf ears.

Members heard that the RAMM and the leisure centre were the council’s biggest energy consumers, which made them eligible for the grants. They are also the council’s two most energy-inefficient buildings.

However, they both present challenges which mean access and repairs are complicated.

Cllr Matthew Vizard (Lab, Newton and St Leonards, cabinet member for climate and ecological change, said: “These are incredibly complex and challenging buildings.

“This is very disappointing, and not what we wanted at all, but this would be a very high financial risk with no guarantees of success at the end of it. Taking any other decision would be bordering on reckless.”

Council leader Phil Bialyk (Lab, Exwick) said the authority would not be out of pocket, and had done the right thing to protect the interests of local taxpayers.

“There has been no waste of money,” he said. “We have done a very sensible thing here.”

And Cllr Duncan Wood (Lab, Pinhoe) added: “The RAMM is not an easy building to work with.

“This would have been delivered if it could have been delivered safely, but we’re not giving up. This is something we are going to deliver in one form or another. We have done the right thing.”