Southwark awards £908,717 Surrey Docks heat contract, third in £6.1m programme

Southwark Council has awarded Baystar Ltd up to £908,717, excluding VAT, to remove the gas-fired heating from Surrey Docks Fitness and Watersports Centre.

The Strategic Director of Environment, Sustainability and Leisure took the decision on 13 August. It is the third leisure centre decarbonisation contract the council has approved this month.

The other two went to Alternative Heat Ltd. The decision records put Castle Leisure Centre at £2,911,268.86 and Peckham Pulse at £2,267,249.96, both excluding VAT and both approved on 3 August.

Together the three contracts commit £6,087,235 before VAT. Surrey Docks is the cheapest, at under a third of the Castle price.

The programme covers more than those three centres. On 2 March 2026 the council published notice of a first-stage decision, described as one "To agree the procurement strategy for decarbonisation capital works for four leisure centres".

That first-stage decision, which the council calls Gateway 1, was due in April 2026. Southwark's decisions register for 1 March to 31 July 2026 lists 54 decisions, and none of them is it.

So the record does not show what Gateway 1 approved, or at what value. The Castle award states that it varies the scope of works set at Gateway 1, to cover more phases of the project.

On 12 August the council published notice of a further key decision, due this month. It covers professional services for the works at four centres, named in the notice as Castle, Peckham, Camberwell and Dulwich.

Camberwell and Dulwich have no works contract on the register.

Two items carry a general exception notice among their papers: the Surrey Docks award and the August professional services decision. The council had published its notice of intention on Surrey Docks on 2 March 2026, for a decision due in August. Neither exception notice could be consulted for this story.

No decision record names where the money comes from. Southwark's Executive received an out-turn capital monitoring report for 2025-26 on 20 July, with an annex setting out the General Fund capital programme to 2034-35. Neither could be consulted for this story.

Southwark treats spending above £500,000 as a key decision, according to the Surrey Docks issue record. All three awards exceed it.

The Surrey Docks decision can be called in until 20 August, meaning referred to a scrutiny committee before it takes effect. The register records no call-ins. If none is lodged it comes into force on 21 August.

The Castle and Peckham Pulse call-in periods have expired. Both took effect on 11 August.