Tenbury Community Pool has beaten the competition and taken gold at the recent Freedom Leisure Awards Ceremony.

This year's awards ceremony, presided over by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, served as a platform to highlight the exceptional efforts undertaken by the organisation and its colleague teams across the regions they serve at promoting community health and wellbeing, and to celebrate the individual achievements by the leisure and cultural venues.

Tenbury Community Pool, operated by not-for profit leisure trust Freedom Leisure, came out on top by winning Environmental Performance of the Year 2023 to 2024, beating off competition from over 120 centres in England and Wales.

Freedom Leisure and Tenbury Community Pool trustees have brought in a range of measures to reduce energy consumption.

Coupled with this, staff at the pool strived to engage with every single customer and stakeholder to ensure they were aligned with the strategy to reduce energy use and to play their part, both from an environmental perspective but also to ensure the sustainability of community swimming facilities such as Tenbury Community Pool.

This has resulted in massive energy savings, with 34 per cent less electricity and 41 per cent less gas being used, with close management and monitoring of energy use.

Ludlow Advertiser: Freedom Leisure chief executive Ivan Horsfall Turner, area technical manager Chris Wedgbury, and Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson Freedom Leisure chief executive Ivan Horsfall Turner, area technical manager Chris Wedgbury, and Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson (Image: Freedom Leisure)

Freedom Leisure area manager Rob Tyler said he was delighted that the pool has received the award. 

"It is a testament to the hard work the team put in each and every day ensuring that energy usage is monitored," he said.

"We are very grateful to Tenbury Community Pool and their trustees for their partnership support which included securing external funding for energy saving measures, such as renewable energy, improved glazing, energy efficient boilers and solar panel installation that are now supplying five per cent of the facilities electricity demands.”

Pool chairman Adrian Taylor said the trustees were proud of the two awards they had received in recognition of their progress towards providing an energy efficient and sustainable leisure facility.

"We thank the staff of Freedom Leisure Tenbury, the charities, organisations and individuals who have provided financial and technical support during our ‘Tenbury Community Pool Goes Green’ journey," he said.