WORK is underway installing solar panels and air source heat pumps for a building on the edge of Dorchester's Borough Gardens.

It is the latest phase in Dorchester Town Council's ongoing policy to 'green' as much of its operations as possible.

The latest installations will help to provide heat not only for the Borough Gardens House, which is used for public events, but also for the adjacent glasshouses where thousands of plants for the town's parks and gardens are grown.

Other measures already taken by the town council include electric powered work vehicles, electric gardening equipment, solar panels on a depot building and water boreholes in the Borough Gardens and Weymouth Avenue recreation ground.

The planning permission for the solar panels and heat pumps includes twenty-six solar panels on four roof areas of the Borough Gardens House and an extension..

The solar panels and heat pumps will provide power for the leased first floor residential flat at the Borough Gardens House as well as for the ground floor community room, available for hire, and a basement used for storage. An additional pump will be added to an outbuilding immediately behind the house.

The town council estimates that the solar panels should produce up to 10,400kw hours of power each year, more than half of the building's requirements, with the air source air pumps making an additional contribution by reducing the amount of kilowatt hours needed to heat the house and the adjoining greenhouses.