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Sport England yesterday published a quarterly update on regular sports participation in England.

Our Active People Survey of 190,000 people each year is the biggest of its kind, and is used to measure progress against our targets to get more people playing and enjoying regular sport.

Participation results – both for individual sports and overall - are measured against baselines from Active People Survey 2, which was published in December 2008 - and set the overall baseline for regular sports participation by people aged 16 and over at 6,815,000.

Today’s update shows sport participation levels in the 12-month period from July 2008 – July 2009. Findings of note include:

• 6,902,000 people aged 16 and over are now playing sport at least three times a week at moderate intensity.
• Participation has significantly increased against the baseline in three additional sports since the last quarterly update in June 2009: athletics, canoeing and cycling.
• Participation has significantly decreased in two additional sports since the last update in June 2009: volleyball and snowsport.

Since the last update, participation in table tennis is no longer showing a significant increase and participation in football is no longer showing a significant decrease.

Please see the full research results