A heating system at Colchester General Hospital has won a top award.

The heat recovery system won Best Product for Improving Sustainability and/or Reducing Energy at the 16th annual Building Better Healthcare Awards.

It allows waste heat from the boilers to provide heating and hot water for the Elmstead Day Unit and the Mary Barron & Haematology Day Unit.

A £600,000 grant from a Department of Health energy and sustainability fund paid for the system, and Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust was one of only three of 13 trusts which applied to be successful.

The project will reduce carbon emissions by 974 tonnes a year, an 8% cut on 2010/11 levels.

Nick Chatten, projects director at CHUFT, said: “It was good to be able to attend the awards ceremony in London with colleagues because our staff were closely involved in both projects.

“We were celebrating being able to reduce our carbon emissions at the same time as reducing our energy bills by £200,000 a year and creating an outstanding environment for cancer patients, staff and visitors.

“What was particularly gratifying was that the award we did win gives some well-deserved recognition to our backroom engineering team who are usually very much unsung heroes. I am thrilled for them and enormously proud of their achievement.”

The hospital’s £25million state-of-the-art radiotherapy centre was also short-listed in three categories.