Skip to content

Four years of Uniting the Movement

How we’ve progressed over the last 12 months of our long-term strategy to transform lives through the power of sport and physical activity.

27th January 2025

Today we're marking four years since we launched Uniting the Movement, our 10-year mission to ensure everyone in England can access the transformative benefits of sport and physical activity.

The strategy describes our vision of a nation where people live happier, healthier and more fulfilled lives, and our role in bringing the sector together to achieve this. 

We continue to focus unashamedly on tackling the disparities in our society that make it harder for some people to reap the rewards of being active – because opportunities are still too dependent on your background, gender, bank balance and postcode.

A young boy chases a girl during a game of tag rugby, with both players sporting wide smiles.

And while our chief executive, Tim Hollingsworth, knows we’ve made great strides in the first four years of our strategy, he acknowledges there’s still much work to be done.

"As we near the halfway point of Uniting the Movement, we have a great deal to be proud of, both individually and collectively," he said.

"As an organisation, we’ve been the driving force for changing the narrative around sport’s potential and the way the sport and physical activity sector sees its purpose: bringing the focus squarely onto the tackling of inequalities in provision at every level and creating real change in how we invest the resources we have to support it.

"Alongside a more long-term, systemic relationship with major partners, our new single point of access to our funding has expanded its remit to new audiences, while we’re collaborating with partners in more and more local communities to ensure those in greatest need can be physically active. This is all backed up by a more targeted approach to our highly effective campaigns.

"We know our work is far from done. There are still too many people who feel excluded from sport and physical activity because the right options and opportunities aren’t there.

"However, as a sector, I believe that we are heading firmly in the right direction to bring about the change we desire. Created in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, I am personally proud of how Uniting the Movement is a strategy that still holds true to the ambition we set at launch: to ensure that everyone has an equal chance to be active – no matter who you are, where you come from or what your background is."

Uniting the Movement: what have we achieved?

Facts and figures illustrating our work towards achieving the goals of Uniting the Movement in 2024:

Infographic featuring facts and figures about Sport England's achievements in 2024.

In the last 12 months of our strategy, we have:

"I am personally proud of how Uniting the Movement is a strategy that still holds true to the ambition we set at launch: to ensure that everyone has an equal chance to be active – no matter who you are, where you come from or what your background is."

Tim Hollingsworth

Chief executive, Sport England

Place-based work

Working closely with places of greatest need has been a big part of our work over the last year. We’re continuing to expand our reach into local communities across England to help more people to be physically active by breaking down the barriers that get in the way.  

In collaboration with local partners, we’re investing up to £250 million of National Lottery and Exchequer funding into more than 90 Place Partnerships across England that have the highest inactivity levels and other social need indicators.

You can learn more about our work with the Get Doncaster Moving partnership in the video below.

Tackling the big issues

In our strategy we identified five big issues – areas where we see the greatest potential for preventing and tackling inequalities in sport and physical activity.

The following statistics illustrate some of the work we’ve done so far during the period of Uniting the Movement to address those issues:

What impact has it had on activity levels?

Our Active Lives surveys show that there are two million more adults getting active on a regular basis through sport and physical activity than in 2016, while children and young people’s activity levels remained stable across the 2023-24 academic year

However, there are still major differences between demographic groups and places when it comes to activity levels, with women, those from lower socio-economic groups and Black and Asian people still less likely to be active than others.

This is why Uniting the Movement has such a strong focus on tackling those inequalities and why we’re investing more in the people and places that need extra support.

An older man holding a football talks to a girl in a sports hall.

Looking ahead to 2025

We’ll be focusing on fewer and more specific areas of policy to concentrate our work on the issues that matter most.

We’ll continue to target our efforts and investment towards areas of greatest need, and ensure what we do is clearly linked to the government’s health and opportunity missions.

We'll be launching a new leadership community to support decision-makers at every level to focus on tackling inequalities. 

And we’ll continue to work closely with our partners and government to advocate for the role of sport and physical activity in addressing the big issues in society.
 

Explore our strategy

Sign up to our newsletter

You can find out exactly how we'll look after your personal data, but rest assured we'll only use it to make sure you receive our newsletter, to understand how you interact with our newsletter, and to provide administrative information about our newsletter.