Sky-rocketing energy bills for Kirklees Council’s buildings revealed, with Dewsbury Crematorium and the town's market among the most costly

A presentation by Dean Langton, the council’s service director for finance, on the council’s financial management of energy was given to the overview and scrutiny management committee on Wednesday (August 2).

This showed just how much costs have sky-rocketed for the local authority as a result of the global energy crisis, and highlighted the buildings that have been the largest drains on council resources.

Mr Langton first outlined the global energy crisis and how it had impacted the council’s finances.

He told the meeting that following the Covid-19 pandemic, the global demand for energy “spiked significantly” and caused prices to increase generally and for the local authority.

He explained that on the back of that was the Russian invasion of Ukraine leading to further energy price hikes.

A 948 per cent increase in electricity costs was generated by Huddersfield Town Hall when comparing the years 2020/21 to 2022/23.

Its costs shot up from £3,227 to £80,523, but this sharp rise could be attributed to the building being used significantly less during the pandemic years and then coming back into use.

The site using the most electricity in 2022/23 was Civic Centre III, with its costs almost doubling from £79,896 in 2021/22, to £158,006 in 2022/23.

Other major users of electricity included Huddersfield Town Hall and Queensgate and Dewsbury Market Halls.

Another mammoth percentage increase in cost was generated by Huddersfield’s Central Library’s gas consumption, with this rising by 935 per cent from the years 2020/21 to 2022/23. However, this could again, most likely be put down to a lack of usage during the pandemic.

Huddersfield and Dewsbury’s crematoriums were the top two biggest users when it came to gas, with Huddersfield’s costs soaring from £34,557 in 2021/22 to £232,326 in 2022/23.

Other buildings racking up large gas bills include Huddersfield Library, Huddersfield Town Hall and Civic Centre II.

The council’s contracts for its utilities were said to cover four areas – the corporate estate and street lighting, homes and neighbourhoods, Kirklees Active Leisure and schools and colleges.

Across the whole of the council’s corporate estate, the gas costs nearly quadrupled from £591,770 in 2021/22 to £2.345m in 2022/23.

Electricity also saw the council fork out significantly more cash, with £1.5m spent in 2021/22 and almost £2.9m in 2022/23.

The cost of street lighting also experienced a sharp hike, rising from £1.3m in 2021/22 to nearly £2.2m in the following financial year.

Kirklees Active Leisure also struggled as a result of the energy crisis, with swimming pools being described as “money pits” during the meeting.

This saw the council provide support, with just over £1m coming from the local authority for electricity and slightly more than £2m for gas in 2022/23, compared with £403k and £425k, respectively, in the previous financial year.

To reduce its costs, the council has switched energy providers and is exploring an asset rationalisation programme. This could see buildings that are deemed inefficient and costly mothballed or demolished, as a council report revealed in March.

In its most recent budget, the council has accommodated for continued increased energy costs, with street lights anticipated to cost the council significantly less money than was budgeted for.

It was suggested that this could be due to 99 per cent of Kirklees’ street lights being converted to LEDs as of March this year in an £18m project.

Mr Langton told the committee of the measures put in place to improve the council’s energy efficiency. These ranged from using better management systems in council buildings and renewable energy installations to new boilers and hot water systems being put into Batley, Dewsbury and Huddersfield town halls.

He said: “There’s a variety of things that the council has attempted to do within its resources and where the business case stacks up to invest in those buildings, at the same time as of course, rationalising the estate wherever it can so we don’t have buildings that are inefficient.

“I’m sure there’s inevitably more that the council could do to do that and the government runs the public sector decarbonisation project and, as I understand it, we’ve bid for money on that and have been successful sometimes, not been successful other times.

"Efforts are being made to try to invest in our buildings as best as possible.”