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Compare NowBusiness Water for Gyms & Leisure Centres
If your site has a pool, your water bill is not what it looks like. The dry side — showers, toilets, the kettle in reception — is the obvious bit, and it’s usually the smaller half. The pool is the other half. Backwash alone can run to 8–12m³ a week per filter, and that volume goes down the drain at full retail margin even though it never touched a member. We’ve seen leisure trusts paying clean-water and wastewater rates on the same cubic metre of backwash because no one ever applied for a non-return discount.
You can switch retailer. Gyms and leisure centres have had that right in England since 2017. Most never have.
This page covers what leisure operators actually pay for, where the pool quietly drives up the wrong tariff, and the three procurement routes most sites use to bring a sharper contract in. It also covers shower flow benchmarks, sauna and steam refills, and the surface drainage charges that quietly stack up on a leisure-site car park.
- England’s non-household water market opened to competition on 1 April 2017 under the Water Act 2014.
- Around 20 retailers are licensed by Ofwat to supply gyms, leisure centres and sports clubs.
- Wholesale supply still comes from regional water companies (Thames Water, Severn Trent, Yorkshire Water, and others).
- A 25m pool with two sand filters typically discharges 600–1,000m³ of backwash a year. On a mid-sized leisure centre that’s around a quarter of total volume.
- Shower flow rates above 9 L/min are now considered out of spec under most water-efficiency benchmarks. Many estates still run 12–14 L/min heads.
- The three biggest savings levers: getting backwash credited rather than billed twice, benchmarking shower flow, and stripping standing charges off out-of-season satellite sites.
Why leisure centres pay more for water than they should
A busy leisure centre cycles water through pool plant rooms, dishwashers, ice makers and back-of-house prep at a far higher rate per square metre than most commercial sites. That alone is fine — what isn’t fine is paying daily standing charges on a tariff that hasn’t been touched since the contract was signed, drainage charges on a forecourt that drains to a soakaway, and meter estimates that have been creeping up for two years.
Gyms and leisure centres also tend to sit on tenanted commercial leases — the landlord is often named on the bill, but the operator is the one bleeding money. The retailer doesn’t volunteer corrections, and most leisure centre owners haven’t been told the market is competitive.
The five places leisure centres overpay
| What’s going wrong | Why it costs you money |
|---|---|
| Pool backwash billed at full wastewater rate | Backwash water from pool filtration is metered as fresh in and bills as foul out, even though it goes to the same combined drain. A wastewater deduct can recover this. |
| Shower flow not benchmarked | Member showers run between 9 and 14 litres a minute on the same bill. Restrictors costing under £50 cut the volume by a third without a single complaint, but no retailer is paid to suggest them. |
| No pool cover overnight | An uncovered 25-metre pool can lose 1–2m³ of evaporation a night. Through a winter that’s tens of thousands of litres of clean water bought in to top it back up, all on retail margin. |
| Sauna and steam refills mixed into main meter | Steam rooms refill cycles run on the main supply. Without a sub-meter, the volume blends into the rest of the site and inflates the wet-side load profile. |
| Surface drainage on car park and outdoor courts | External tarmac and astroturf areas are charged surface water drainage on the assumption they drain to public sewer. A site-plan audit usually finds at least half drains to soakaway or attenuation. |
Can leisure groups and independent operators switch water supplier?
Yes, and the mechanism is different depending on who’s signing the contract.
An leisure centre is its own legal entity, so it can enter a water contract directly — no council approval needed. Multi-academy trusts can contract centrally for every gym in the chain, which usually unlocks better volume pricing. Independent operators sign for their own site, with the contract in the trading entity’s name.
The 12 retailers below are all licensed by Ofwat to supply non-household water in England. Pricing, service, and hospitality-sector experience vary — most trusts shortlist three and go to a simple comparison exercise.
Routes to procurement
Three ways operators in this sector typically bring a new water contract in. Each comes with its own trade-off between control, effort and how sharp the price lands.
ukactive members, sports-trust frameworks and Sport England’s procurement schemes pre-tender water across leisure portfolios. The unit rate is usually competitive, and the contract terms are vetted. The trade-off: framework deals rarely include a backwash deduct review or a bespoke pool-makeup tariff line. The water is bought, not engineered.
Leisure centre water FAQs
Can we get a discount on pool backwash water?
In most regions, yes — but you have to apply for it. The mechanism is usually called a non-return or trade effluent allowance, and it credits the wastewater portion of water that goes to filtration backwash rather than the foul sewer. The retailer needs evidence of the discharge route and typical volumes.
What’s a sensible shower flow rate for a leisure site?
The widely quoted benchmark is 9 L/min for a member-changing-room shower, or 6 L/min for a low-flow water-efficient model. Many UK leisure sites are still running heads at 12–14 L/min. The retrofit pays back inside 18 months on most sites.
Should sauna and steam rooms be on a separate sub-meter?
If you can run one, yes. Steam rooms refill on a weekly cycle and saunas top up daily through humidity controls. The volumes aren’t huge, but they’re consistent and they pull your overall wastewater banding the wrong way when they sit on the main meter.
Do we have to pay surface drainage on the car park and outdoor courts?
Only if the rainwater from those areas reaches the public foul sewer. If your car park drains to a soakaway, attenuation tank, or watercourse, you can apply for a surface water rebate. The same applies to floodlit outdoor courts and AstroTurf pitches.
What about gyms with no pool — does any of this still apply?
The pool-specific items don’t, but the dry-side levers do. Shower flow, standing charges on satellite studios, surface drainage on car parks and the basic question of whether your retailer is the cheapest one in market — all land equally on a dry gym.
What does a free audit actually look at?
Three things at the same time. We compare the unit rate against the live market across all 12 retailers. We audit surface drainage, trade effluent and standing charges for historic billing errors that can be backdated up to six years. And we check whether the contract structure fits your actual usage profile better than the default. If we don’t recover anything, you don’t pay a fee.
How do I get a quote without committing?
Send a recent water bill. The SPID, annual cubic-metre volume and current retailer are all on it. We come back within two working days with a like-for-like alternative quote and a flag if anything looks worth auditing for historic refunds.
