Our support will ensure all places across England will gain access to the tools, resources, learnings and capabilities to help them work more collaboratively and achieve the systemic change that is needed at a local level to address the barriers to getting people active.
By galvanising the system in this way, we know we can bring about lasting and sustainable change to every part of the country.
Working together for local change
Since launching our place-based expansion last November, we’ve invested nearly £20m to help each of our place partners develop their individual approach.
This way of working – ground up and rooted in the needs of local communities – is contributing towards achieving a positive impact that we have not seen previously.
We’ve seen that baking in physical activity into local, long-term strategic and policy commitments is a key solution to driving change within wider outcomes such as health, environmental sustainability and community cohesion.
Take Exeter as an example.
They have embedded our Active Design principles into their Liveable Exeter strategy – a 20-year housing plan – by which they will build 12,000 homes where giving people chances of being physically active are at the front and centre of those developments.
We’re also seeing greater connection and collaboration amongst partners within a place than we’ve ever seen before.
At the end of September, the Greater Manchester Memorandum of Understanding brought together the combined authority, integrated care partnership, the transport, voluntary and community sectors, leisure providers, the GM Moving Active Partnership and Sport England.
Through this collaboration, we will see resources aligned to support the integration of physical activity and sport at the highest decision-making levels in the city and region.
And within these communities, we are seeing that this work is contributing towards positive signs of inequalities reducing and the inactivity gap closing.
The contribution of the work and the focus of partners in Greater Manchester has seen year-on-year reductions of inactivity levels in children and young people and, for the first time, this is lower than the national average.
Meanwhile, in Pennine Lancashire, direct engagement and collaboration with the Muslim community has seen over 5,000 young people increase their daily activity levels through the Active Madrassahs programme.
More positive change to come
Impact like this is being felt up and down the country and this work really does speak for itself with a robust message: together we are stronger.
Our Place Partnerships will see us work in every corner of the country, partnering with organisations in areas that face the biggest barriers to a more active life.
Together we will create lasting change within the communities that need it most to ensure that more people can live active and healthier lives for longer.
So, looking forward to reaching new places in the next year and to keep celebrating across the country.
