DORSET Council is hoping to become carbon neutral five years earlier than originally planned.

Lib Dem Council Leader Nick Ireland has confirmed that his party's election pledge was to reduce the original timescale for the council itself from 2040 to 2035 and for the wider community from 2050 to 2045.

He told a scrutiny committee meeting that the new dates were still his party's objective, although said that work still needed to be completed on the costings – some of which may be available for discussion in the autumn.

The news came during a look at how the council is progressing with its pledges on climate, the environment and nature.

During a presentation it was said that meeting targets was becoming increasingly difficult with many of the 'quick win' actions having already been taken, most funded by an £18million one-off grant from the previous Government. The single grant had undwritten much of the council's climate work over the past two years.

Councillors at the Place and Resources Scrutiny committee that there had been 'teething problems' with several heat pump devices, paid for from the grant to help the authority make public buildings more efficient to operate.

The programme has payed for thousands of solar panels to be added to public buildings across the county; including council offices, schools, libraries and leisure centres; adding low-energy lighting where it was not already in place and installing heat pumps.

Place and Resources Scrutiny committee chair, Cllr Noc Lacey-Clarke, said he had recently been in a public building where the grant money had paid for a heat pump – yet it was not working.

"I'm hoping that's one of a kind. Of the 17 are most of them up and running?" he asked.

Officers said that although there had been teething problems with some, most were now operating as they should be – with two at leisure centres in Purbeck and Blandford expected to be commissioned in the next month, or two. Both are said to be complex, bespoke installations, making their introduction to the buildings more complicated. A third, unnamed large project, is also to yet to be commissioned.

The committee heard that of the seventeen heat pump projects paid for from the grant, one was at County Hall in the South Annexe building and another device, a passive air-cooling system, had been added to the council IT suite, reducing the need for air conditioning.