Female sports participation drives increase in Active People Survey figures

The latest Active People Survey results have revealed an increase in the number of people being physically active. The ongoing work of our members has continued to help strengthen the sport and recreation sector, and there are now 340,000 more people in the UK currently engaging in sport and physical activity.

Women accounted for 75% of the 340,000 extra people getting active and consequently, the gender gap in sport has now reduced to 1.6 million. There are many grassroots initiatives that have helped reduce this gap, such as the Lawn Tennis Association’s ‘Tennis Tuesdays’. This focuses on encouraging women to take up tennis, and makes a real impact by motivating more people to stay active on a regular basis.

Team sports have also become more popular, with cricket, rugby union and netball all noted with higher participation figures. The ECB launched the Get the Game on campaign in 2015 to boost participation figures by providing clubs with advice and support on how to make the game more accessible. The initiative used research to tailor the campaign and advise on matters such as moving a match to midweek to make sure more players are available. As our members continue to strengthen the use of data to provide insight, we welcome more initiatives that use statistics to inspire and deliver campaigns that better suit the needs of the customer.

However, there was a decline of 2,400 in the number of disabled people taking part in sport, despite significant focus and investment on disability sport.

Sport England’s Towards an Active Nation strategy, establishes a clear objective to tackle inactivity, which it states applies to 28% of the population in England. Under-represented groups are a key audience, with women and girls, people from lower socio-economic groups, older people, and disabled people all signposted to receive 25% of Sport England’s overall investment in a bid to increase physical activity and participation in these groups.

The new Active Lives survey, which was introduced in the Government strategy Sporting Future, will measure how active people are overall rather than how often they take part in a particular sport.  This change in the way the sector will measure success is being introduced to better reflect how people do sport and also capture data from participants. This is a crucial new measure as we want to ensure people are encouraged to stay active for life.

Emma Boggis, Chief Executive of the Sport and Recreation Alliance said:

“It’s good to see that the work our members are doing to encourage greater participation in sport and physical activity is having an effect and we look forward to helping them build on this alongside the core aims of the new Sport England strategy.

The Active People Survey results give an indication of where the sector needs to focus and with the introduction of Active Lives, we are looking forward to seeing how this can enhance our members understanding of the needs of their customers.

The new investment principles set out how funding decisions will be made and we will work with our members to help navigate and establish how they can best meet the criteria.

The Sports Summit was the first step in helping our members learn how to use data and evidence and, whilst the new figures represent a generally positive trend, we now need to work with them to demonstrate their impact across the five outcome areas.”

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