The short version. A leisure site pays for time, not just for kit. Carbon Trust guidance puts energy at as much as 30% of total running costs in a typical sports and leisure facility, second only to labour. The expensive loads are the ones tied to your opening hours: air handling, shower hot water and lighting. Add water and heating becomes almost the whole bill. Because that profile is long and flat, suppliers price it very differently from one another, which is why comparing beats accepting a renewal letter.
Most small businesses have a peak and a trough. A shop is busy at lunchtime and dead at four. A gym is not really like that. The air handling over the training floor has to move the same volume of air at 7am, at 2pm and at 11pm, because it is sized for the room rather than for the number of people in it. The hot water cylinder reheats after every shower whether that shower was the first of the day or the fortieth. And if you sell 24-hour access, none of it ever switches off.
That is the shape of the problem. You cannot trade your way out of it by turning things down, because the things drawing the power are the things members are paying for. What you can change is the rate you buy at.
Where the money goes on a leisure site
Working from published UK benchmarks, and costing electricity at 25p per kWh and gas at 7p per kWh, a typical dry site splits roughly like this. Not every line applies to every business, and the ranges are wide because a converted first floor and a 20,000 sq ft shed are not the same building.
- Air handling and ventilation over the training floor. 25,000 to 70,000 kWh a year, roughly £6,250 to £17,500 of electricity.
- Space heating and hot water on gas boilers. 40,000 to 180,000 kWh a year, roughly £2,800 to £12,600.
- Showers and changing rooms. 12,000 to 45,000 kWh a year, roughly £3,000 to £11,250.
- Cardio equipment and screens. 8,000 to 35,000 kWh a year, roughly £2,000 to £8,750.
- Lighting on the floor, courts and car park. 10,000 to 40,000 kWh a year, roughly £2,500 to £10,000.
- Pool heating and pool hall ventilation, where you have wet areas. 150,000 to 600,000 kWh a year, roughly £10,500 to £42,000.
Look at the size of that last line against the rest. Carbon Trust guidance puts pool heating and pool hall ventilation at up to 65% of total energy use in a wet facility, and the single biggest loss is evaporation from an uncovered water surface overnight. A pool is not a bigger version of a gym. It is a different business with a gym attached.
On a dry site, lighting is around 25% of the electricity cost and Carbon Trust says it can be cut by up to a third. On a wet site, that same lighting is a rounding error next to the boiler.
Typical annual usage and bills by site type
These are the bands we publish across our leisure pages. They are typical, estimated figures built from CIBSE TM46 benchmarks and Carbon Trust sector guidance, not quotes, and they cover gas and electricity together.
| Type of site | Electricity a year | Gas a year | Typical annual bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boutique fitness studio | 20,000 to 90,000 kWh | 0 to 30,000 kWh | £5,400 to £25,000 |
| CrossFit, strength or martial arts gym | 15,000 to 60,000 kWh | 25,000 to 90,000 kWh | £5,900 to £21,700 |
| Sports or social club | 20,000 to 90,000 kWh | 40,000 to 180,000 kWh | £8,200 to £35,500 |
| Golf club or driving range | 30,000 to 200,000 kWh | 20,000 to 250,000 kWh | £9,300 to £67,900 |
| Independent or 24-hour gym | 45,000 to 150,000 kWh | 20,000 to 70,000 kWh | £13,000 to £42,800 |
| Soft play or trampoline park | 45,000 to 180,000 kWh | 90,000 to 400,000 kWh | £17,900 to £73,400 |
| Swim school or private pool | 40,000 to 160,000 kWh | 150,000 to 600,000 kWh | £20,900 to £82,400 |
And by gym floor size
If you run a straightforward gym, floor area is the quickest sanity check on your own bill. These are typical, estimated annual totals for gas and electricity combined.
| Gym floor | Typical annual bill |
|---|---|
| Under 2,000 sq ft, small studio or PT space | Around £9,000 |
| 2,000 to 5,000 sq ft, typical independent gym | Around £15,000 |
| 5,000 to 10,000 sq ft, full gym with studios | Around £32,000 |
| 10,000 to 20,000 sq ft, large multi-zone site | Around £62,000 |
| 20,000 sq ft and above, big-box gym | Around £105,000 |
The 24-hour question
Owners often ask whether 24-hour access is worth it once the energy is priced in. Do the arithmetic on the loads that follow your opening hours rather than guessing. Take the air handling line above: 25,000 to 70,000 kWh a year while you are open twelve hours a day. Extend to round-the-clock access and that line roughly doubles, because the units are still shifting air over an empty floor at 3am. At 25p per kWh that is somewhere between another £6,250 and another £17,500 a year, before you add the lighting and the standby draw on twenty cardio consoles.
The useful part is what it does to your load profile. A 24-hour site has a high, flat overnight baseload, and suppliers price that very differently from one another. Some want it, some do not, and the difference shows up in the unit rate rather than in any headline. It is the single best argument for going to the market rather than signing your incumbent's renewal offer, and if you have a smart or half-hourly meter the data makes the case for you.
Four contract traps that catch leisure operators
1. Out-of-contract and deemed rates
When a fixed deal ends and you have not signed a new one, the supply does not stop. You are moved onto out-of-contract or deemed rates, which typically run 30% to 70% above a negotiated fixed price. Take an independent gym in the middle of the published band, around £27,900 a year. If that is being billed at rates sitting 30% above a negotiated price, the negotiated equivalent is roughly £21,500. Same building, same members, same machines.
2. Rollover you did not agree to
Volunteer-run clubs get caught by this more than anyone, because the person who signed the last contract has often stepped down. Ofgem limits rollover contracts for microbusinesses to twelve months, which helps, but twelve months on the wrong rate is still twelve months. Nominate one person to own the supply contract and diarise the end date the week it is signed.
3. Standing charges across several meters
Golf clubs and sports clubs rarely have one supply point. There is the clubhouse, the greenkeepers compound, the floodlights, sometimes the range. At around £365 a year in standing charges per meter, four supply points cost roughly £1,460 a year before a single kWh is used, and each one has its own end date waiting to roll over. Bring them onto one renewal date and price them as a bundle.
4. Half-hourly meters and agreed capacity
Above roughly 100,000 kWh of electricity a year you are likely to be on a half-hourly meter, which covers plenty of big-box gyms, trampoline parks and pools. Half-hourly supplies carry capacity and availability charges alongside the unit rate, and agreed capacity is often set years ago for plant you no longer run. It is worth reviewing at the same time as the rate, not afterwards.
Six efficiency moves worth making
- Cover the pool every night. Evaporation is the largest single heat loss from a pool, and pool heating with hall ventilation can be up to 65% of a wet site's energy use. Nothing else on this list moves as much money.
- Put the air handling on a time clock or BMS schedule. Ventilation should follow the class timetable and the busy hours, not run flat out from open to close. On the band above, trimming a quarter of the hours is worth roughly £1,500 to £4,400 a year.
- LED with daylight and PIR control. Lighting is around 25% of a leisure site's electricity cost and Carbon Trust says it can be cut by up to a third. Against the £2,500 to £10,000 lighting band that is roughly £830 to £3,300 a year.
- Drop heating setpoints by 1°C. Carbon Trust puts the saving at around 8% of fuel consumption. On a club burning 40,000 to 180,000 kWh of gas, that is about £225 to £1,000 a year for the cost of changing a number on a controller.
- Service the boiler annually. A well-maintained boiler saves as much as 10% of annual heating costs, and it is the cheapest measure here.
- Move floodlights to LED. LED sports lighting cuts floodlight energy by up to 60% against metal halide, and the Football Foundation estimates savings of around £8,000 per full size pitch a year. If you light pitches, courts or a range, start here.
When to switch, and how it works
Start looking three to six months before your contract end date. That is early enough to hold a price you like and late enough that suppliers will quote you properly. If you are already out of contract, there is no waiting period at all, and that is the situation where the biggest movement usually shows up.
The process itself is unglamorous, which is the point. You upload a recent bill, we read your meter numbers, consumption and end date off it, and we take that to the market across 20 plus UK suppliers. Where you have smart or half-hourly data we use it, because a flat overnight baseload is worth showing rather than leaving a supplier to assume. You see the offers, you choose, and we handle the paperwork. It is free to you, we are paid a commission by the supplier you pick and that commission is disclosed before you sign anything, and we are not tied to any one supplier.
Nothing physical changes. Your meter, your cables and your supply all stay exactly as they are and only the name on the bill moves, so there is no interruption to a class, a session or a pool plant room. A switch typically completes within four to six weeks of the paperwork and can be timed to start the day your current contract ends. Businesses that switch with us save 40% on average, typically 30 to 50%, and more if you are on out-of-contract or deemed rates. See how we estimate. Get a free estimate for your site, or read the full gyms and leisure energy guide.
Questions we get asked
How much does energy cost a typical UK gym per year?
It depends almost entirely on size and on whether you have wet areas. A small studio gym under 2,000 sq ft is usually somewhere around £9,000 a year for gas and electricity combined. A 5,000 to 10,000 sq ft site with showers is closer to £32,000. A big-box gym over 20,000 sq ft can pass £100,000. Anything with a pool sits in a different league because pool heating and pool hall ventilation can be up to 65% of total energy use.
Does 24-hour opening make my rates worse?
Not worse, but different. A 24-hour site has a high overnight baseload, and that is a load shape some suppliers price generously and others do not. It is exactly the profile where going to several suppliers rather than accepting one renewal offer tends to show a visible difference in the unit rate.
My club has three meters on different contracts. Can they be done together?
Yes, and they should be. Clubhouse, floodlight and workshop supplies are usually set up at different times on different end dates, which is how one of them quietly rolls over. Bundling them onto a single renewal date usually improves the rate on all of them and removes the trap.
All figures on this page are estimates from published UK benchmarks and sector guidance, not quotes, and your own bill depends on your building, your hours and your current contract. See how we estimate.