The organisation will provide £250m of National Lottery and Exchequer funding into its place-based work, with £190m of this focused on an additional 80-100 places which have the greatest need. An additional £35m will be invested to strengthen work with 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. In November, Tim Hollingsworth, Sport England chief executive, joined Sports Minister Stuart Andrew at Waterside Leisure Centre on Canvey Island – one of the places that will benefit from the new proposals. 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, according to Sport England.

Greatest resource It will also 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”. This significant revenue and capital investment, which is central to Sport England’s 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.

Physical activity data The plans will use a range of data sources to inform this approach, including physical activity data from Active Lives Surveys, as well as wider social data including IMD, community need and health inequalities data. Hollingsworth said: “Access to sport and physical activity in England is still not close to being a level playing field. Where a person lives and the environment around them has a huge impact on how likely they are to be physically active. Too often, people in low-income communities don’t have access to the same facilities or opportunities as wealthier areas. “This is manifestly unfair – and must be addressed as a real priority. That is why our expanded place partnership programme will unashamedly see us target our resources and efforts on communities that need the greatest levels of support and experience the greatest levels of inequality. “We will invest in those that need it most so that everyone has an equal chance to access the very real benefits of playing sport and be physically active.” Sport England will now talk to the Local Delivery Pilots and Active Partnerships about the need in their places and to explore the role they can play. A statement from the organisation said: “These conversations are just concluding and helping to inform some immediate priorities of where we will go next and where we will need a longer-term phased approach. “This intelligence will lead us to bring forwards stakeholders in targeted places to start a more detailed conversation around a system-based approach to tackling physical inactivity and associated inequalities. “It's important that we co-design the detailed approach so that resources are most effectively utilised based on local leadership and ownership. “Some places with low activity levels and poor wider outcomes are already clear on their own local priorities for getting people moving more and these places will likely be the first early ‘adopters’ in our expansion approach.”

www.sportengland.org/news-and-inspiration/place-partnerships-expanded-help-those-greatest-need