How game-changing place work is helping to get England active

For too long, efforts to get people active followed a familiar pattern – launch a campaign, start a programme, open a facility and hope people turn up.

When engagement was low, especially in communities facing deprivation, ill health or isolation, the blame often fell on individuals.

But the real issue runs deeper.

Today’s Active Lives Adult Survey data shows overall activity levels are improving, yet inequalities remain – and in some cases are widening – highlighting the limits of this approach.

Through our place-based work, we are flipping that script.

Our approach isn’t about parachuting in with short-term initiatives. It’s about changing local systems and putting power, funding and decision-making into the hands of communities themselves.

It’s about reshaping the conditions that make movement possible.

This is a structural shift – from national delivery to locally-led systems; from fragmented interventions to collaboration; and from doing things to communities to working with them.

Crucially, this way of working is starting to show signs of impact, particularly for adults who have historically been least active.

In 2024/25 alone, our investment reached nearly one million people, helping 175,000 to become more active.

From programmes to places

At its core, place-based working recognises a simple truth: where you live shapes how active you are.

Access to safe green space, transport, income, health, and social networks all matter. So instead of generic national solutions, we are investing up to £250 million into over 90 communities with the greatest need.

But funding is only part of it. The real change is in how decisions are made.

The system impact is scaling

Across all place-based work, our impact is increasingly visible at scale.

In 10 of our original 12 Place Pilots, physical activity is now embedded into health and care pathways – meaning movement is supported through GPs, social prescribing and community health teams.

In Doncaster, this approach has mobilised 757 organisations and 1,500 local leaders to create a coordinated local system where physical activity is no longer a standalone service but part of how the whole area works.

In places like Essex, our investment has helped them unlock around £65 million in additional funding – turning relatively small seed funding into large-scale investment that reaches far more people and creates longer-lasting change.

Leadership capacity is also expanding. Over the last two years around 1,000 local leaders have been trained through our Leading the Movement programme, strengthening the ability of places to sustain change beyond our initial funding.

This is not just a collection of local success stories. It is a different operating model. It's a quiet revolution – one that is reshaping how communities think about movement, health and wellbeing from the ground up.

Because lasting change doesn’t come from programmes, it comes from places.