Question

To ask the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney, representing the House of Commons Commission, what assessment the Commission has made of the potential impact of the installation of heat pumps on the parliamentary estate on (a) noise and (b) electricity consumption.

The number of heat pumps installed on the Parliamentary estate over the past three years is as follows:

2022: 10 heat pumps
2023: 41 heat pumps
2024: 18 heat pumps

Most of these heat pumps have been configured to provide cooling for comms rooms. A comms room (short for communications room) is a dedicated space within a building that houses critical networking and telecommunications equipment. Its primary purpose is to manage data exchange, connectivity, and communication infrastructure for an organisation. In Parliament we call these rooms Secondary Distribution Points (SDPs). Comms rooms are a common feature in most buildings with a reasonable level of IT infrastructure. Air conditioning (provided by a heat pump system) is often used to maintain stable temperatures to prevent overheating and malfunction of the IT equipment.

Where heat pumps are proposed on the Parliamentary estate the system design is interrogated to ensure that the noise generated is not excessive and suitable for the context in which it is located.

Like all other equipment, system components and machines on the estate, heat pumps consume electricity. The design of any proposed heat pump on the estate will be interrogated to confirm that the electrical supply proposed for the heat pump is suitable and can be met by the estate’s electrical infrastructure.