English devolution presents a major opportunity to improve access to sport and physical activity, supporting better health, wellbeing and growth and helping to tackle inequalities and reduce inactivity across the country.
By enabling stronger local collaboration and alignment, devolution can accelerate progress on inclusion and help more people and communities benefit from being active.
Sport and physical activity aligns to the full breadth of devolved powers across economic growth, transport and active travel, strategic planning, skills and employment, health and wellbeing, environment, public safety and culture.
We know that the sport and physical activity sector contributes £39 billion into the economy every year, supporting around 600,000 jobs and delivering over £100 billion in wider societal value.
Conversely, physical inactivity creates significant health and economic challenges, costing the broader economy up to £20 billion annually.
It is essential that, as a sector, we are able to highlight the wide range of opportunities devolution presents and demonstrate the myriad of benefits of embedding sport and physical activity across local agendas and priorities, including:
Positioning sport as a driver of inclusive regional growth, be that through a sporting event, tourism, capital infrastructure investment, place-shaping through the outdoor economy or sport, a fit and healthy workforce and physical activity-led small business development.
Integrating inclusive active travel approaches into regional transport plans, developing greenways, cycle networks and affordable and accessible facilities built out from community-evidenced need.
Developing apprenticeship, employment and volunteer pathways for young people and those furthest from the labour market through sport, physical activity and wellbeing services, supporting routes into work while building confidence, skills and experience.
Strengthening local workforce capacity to better align sport and physical activity to wider health, skills and economic priorities.
Embedding a strategic approach in spatial development strategies to ensure policies and approaches provide sport and physical activity infrastructure that meets communities’ needs and supports growth.
Setting out clear expectations for new housing development and social housing providers to ensure that all new developments have active design principles included from the outset, helping communities connect to their local environment through safe places and spaces to be active in.
Developing regional blue and green corridors that support biodiversity, recreation and low carbon and active travel, and ensuring that leisure infrastructure is built with climate resilience and energy efficiency in mind.
Considering from the outset how to promote the circular economy across all work.
Aligning ambitions to tackle physical inactivity and health inequalities with integrated care system and health and wellbeing board prevention priorities, focusing on neighbourhood health delivery and targeting those with or at risk of long-term health conditions.
We will scale evidence-based approaches through strong cross-system partnerships and shared learning.
Embedding sport within violence reduction units (VRUs) and regional safety partnerships and delivering regional approaches for at-risk cohorts.
Ensuring sport is a key part of cultural offers, alongside arts and heritage, supporting inclusion, belonging, identity and civic pride.
We know that alongside devolution, local government reorganisation is also playing out in different parts of the country and has significant implications for partners in place.
We will continue to work with local and national partners to understand the risks and opportunities this presents and provide appropriate support to ensure the role of sport and physical activity is recognised and valued throughout this process.
We understand that devolution brings a balance of power locally between strategic authorities and their constituent councils. We are keen to work alongside local partners to engage and support as appropriate across the different spatial levels.
We know that the pace of change will differ across the country and we are mindful that this process will also surface different priorities to suit local contexts – that’s the benefit of devolution.
As new authorities gain wider powers, we will act deliberately, alongside our partners, to ensure that creating active and vibrant communities is at the heart of their ambition, including creating safe and welcoming places and spaces and protecting community assets of sport and physical activity importance.
This aligns with our ambition of getting England active from the ground up, which will be the focus for the next five years of our Uniting the Movement strategy.
Our approach will be guided by the principle of proportionate universalism, focusing the greatest effort and investment in the most disadvantaged communities while ensuring all places benefit from learning and support.
Our targeted work will go deeper to support children and young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, enable active and healthy ageing for adults from lower socio-economic backgrounds at risk of or with long-term health conditions and places of greatest need, while providing universal support across workforce, digital and data and ageing infrastructure and assets.
Acting on what we've learned from the first five years of our Uniting the Movement strategy, we will:
We will advocate for sport and physical activity, providing a clear voice and compelling narrative for the sector, and will work with partners to activate and amplify this locally.
Read more about 1. Provide a strong national voice for community sport and physical activity across EnglandWe will work closely with government and other arm’s length bodies to ensure sport and physical activity is recognised as a key part of improving health, wellbeing, growth and opportunity across the country and is integrated across a range of policy areas at different spatial levels.
Read less about 1. Provide a strong national voice for community sport and physical activity across EnglandWe will champion cross-sector collaboration and work in partnership at local, regional and national levels.
Read more about 2. Champion partnership and collaborationWe will work with government departments, other arm’s length bodies and wider strategic partners to align priorities and influence outcomes.
We will continue to invest into the network of Active Partnerships across the country who play a critical role as system change convenors across strategic authorities.
We will ask this network to play a key role in the ongoing development of place partnerships locally to facilitate inclusive local leadership and collaboration.
We will strengthen the connection between national partners we invest into and how they connect into place, aligning our investment and priorities with locally determined solutions.
This collaborative approach will bring together system-wide partners to embed sport and physical activity across multiple agendas and strategies.
Read less about 2. Champion partnership and collaborationWe will provide clear information, guidance and support to partners and places, including local authorities and strategic authorities, to highlight the role of sport and physical activity across housing and strategic planning agendas and add value to locally determined priorities.
Read more about 3. Provide national frameworks, guidance, information and supportThis includes sharing learning and providing guidance to ensure consistent principles, quality, accountability and sustainability factors are considered within local decision-making.
In service of local need, we will continue to place at the heart of our approach the principles of co-designed, community-led solutions to the sport and physical activity needs in place.
We will champion the role of the planning system, capital investment and active design in creating spaces and places that encourage people to be more physically active, as well as promoting the benefits of transitioning leisure services to ones that are focused on active wellbeing.
We will support planning authorities with the production of their development plans through our government-defined role in the planning system.
Read less about 3. Provide national frameworks, guidance, information and supportWe recognise the importance of local leaders having the power, resources and confidence to design and deliver solutions that reflect local priorities and make best use of community strengths.
Read more about 4. Ensure strong leadership, governance and accountabilityWe will advocate for robust local leadership, governance structures and clear lines of accountability for the work we support and will invest in leadership at all levels.
Our learning has told us that change is more likely where there are strong shared outcomes, leadership is strong and distributed and there is ownership for delivering change.
Read less about 4. Ensure strong leadership, governance and accountabilityWe will support capacity-building, knowledge exchange and systems leadership to ensure robust and resilient local systems that are reflective of local communities and are fit for the future.
Read more about 5. Build capacity, knowledge and capabilityWe will work with Active Partnerships and local partners to understand workforce development needs and embed sport and physical activity across local skills, work and growth plans to support economic and social growth.
Read less about 5. Build capacity, knowledge and capabilityWe will facilitate strategic connections across national, regional and local partners to share learning, drive innovation, and amplify impact.
Read more about 6. Embed evaluation, learning and continuous improvementWe will work with evaluation partners to better understand the impact and implications of place-based, whole-systems working, sharing data, insight and evidence with places to support locally tailored approaches to getting people more active.
We will ensure that effective systems are in place to enable two-way learning loops between local delivery and national policy.
Read less about 6. Embed evaluation, learning and continuous improvementAs local government reorganisation and devolution evolves, we will continue to work in collaboration with partners to support local decision-making in places and where appropriate, provide national context, information and guidance.
Together we will create a movement for movement, collectively advocating for the valuable role sport and physical activity can play in delivering wide-ranging benefits for people and places across England.
The Local Government Association has a hub with everything you need to know about devolution, including internal communications guidance, what's happening across the country and the latest parliamentary developments.