WIREDGOV

We’ve announced a major and unprecedented expansion of our investment into local communities across England to ensure those in greatest need are able to be physically active.

We’re extending our Place Partnerships work to help more people to be physically active by breaking down the barriers that get in the way.  

Tim Hollingsworth, our chief executive, joined Sports Minister Stuart Andrew at Waterside Leisure Centre on Canvey Island – one of the places that will benefit from our new approach – to announce an overall package worth £250 million of National Lottery and Exchequer funding that builds directly on the learning generated by our local delivery pilots since 2017.

This new way of working directly supports the Government’s recent Get Active strategy, which set ambitious targets of getting 2.5m more adults and one million more children active by 2030 to tackle the disparities in activity levels across society. 

Why place matters

We know that where a person lives and the environment around them has a huge impact on how likely they are to be physically active, and that too often people in low-income communities don’t have the access to the same facilities or opportunities as wealthier areas.

For example, the most active place in England has almost double the activity levels of the least active place, while a person’s lifespan could vary by up to nine years depending on where they live.

Furthermore, people living in some places in England are twice as likely to have a disability or health condition than people living in other places.

We know that if we can increase activity levels in these places there'll be significant benefits to the people living there.

Over the last five years, through the evaluation of our local delivery pilots and through longer-term investment in the network of 43 Active Partnerships, we’ve clearly seen that targeted action, built on the deep insights and understanding of the people who live and work in a place, is now creating positive lasting change. 

What we’ve announced yesterday

That’s why, over the next five years, we’ll expand the number of places that we’ll work with in this way.

We'll invest £250m of National Lottery and Exchequer funding into our place-based work, with £190m of this focused on an additional 80-100 places which have greatest need.

In addition, we’ll continue to support our existing place partners to make further progress and impact in their communities.

An additional £35m will be invested to strengthen work with our existing place partnerships, with a further £25m being made available to create a Universal Offer of key tools and resources, ensuring every area of England can access support.

This significant revenue and capital investment, which is central to our Uniting the Movement strategy, builds directly on the learning generated by our LDPs since 2017.

This insight and expertise will help many more communities develop a Place-Based Systemic Approach to physical activity that reflects their unique needs, relationships and geography.

We’ll target the greatest resource to areas with highest inactivity levels and other social need indicators. This is where this commitment can have the biggest impact on our key outcomes.

We’ll use a range of data sources to inform this approach, including physical activity data from our Active Lives Surveys, as well as wider social data including IMD, community need and health inequalities data.

A further explanation of our analysis can be found in our 'Identifying priority places' guide below.

Our targeted investment is on top of our universal place-based support, and over the coming months we'll be developing and expanding this offer that includes leadership development, the transfer of learning and access to resources, advice and guidance for partners.

Click here for the full press release