Place Partnerships expanded to help those in greatest need

One of the three guiding principles of Uniting the Movement relates to our goal of tackling inequalities, and our principle of investing most in those that need it most. 

This principle is at the heart of how we'll expand our place-based work into an additional 80-100 places.

We’ll invest a greater amount of time and resources in those places where the need is greatest.

For expanding our place-based partnerships, we'll classify a place as somewhere of ‘greatest need’ primarily based on where the data indicates there's a ‘sport and physical activity need’, and also consider where this coincides with ‘social need’.

This is because we know that people who are less active tend to have worse outcomes and that these people and communities have more to gain from a change in physical activity behaviour.

To help identify places of greatest need we have established a Place Need Classification (PNC) to support prioritisation and decision making.

This has been collated and ranked for each place across England.

The places that fall within the top 10%, 20% and 25% for both a sport and physical activity need and social need are identified within the PNC.

We'll start our conversations with those places listed within the top 10%.

This will be an opportunity to explore the current and future opportunities for collaborative work in each place.

We have purposefully not developed a competitive process for Place Partnerships.

Firstly, we realise that such a process is capacity and resource-intensive for both the applicant and the funding body. We know how scarce and stretched resources are at a local level and so we wanted to move away from making that worse.

Secondly, we would like to see all places to take a more systemic approach to tackling inactivity and inequality – starting with the tools and resources we'll have available through our universal offer.

This is a development journey that all places can go on around Place Based Systemic Approaches, but we know that some places will need increased support and resources to make change happen because their need is greater – this is where we will start with targeted interventions.

We'll also enable colleagues within Active Partnerships and the original Local Delivery Pilot areas to help.  

The learnings from our Local Delivery Pilots and other place-based system work tells us that support around capacity, skills development, networking and strengthening local structures are critical.

From Free Bikes in Birmingham to ‘Beating the Streets’ in Burnley, from getting school kids moving in Calderdale to rehabilitating patients in South Tees to improve their chances of recovery after surgery, we’ve been targeting systemic barriers to activity in each community.

This also includes how we align spaces to be active around people’s needs such as Great Sankey neighbourhood hub, which encompasses leisure, library, health, and cultural facilities under one roof.

And the results have been amazingly encouraging.

In the pilot places we saw increased activity amongst the people who are typically less active, better value for money than national programmes, and signs of faster recovery and greater resilience in the sport and activity network after Covid-19 than other areas.

This has given us confidence to expand the approach.

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.  

This will be a wide-ranging offer which will support places across the country who are keen to work with us to unite the movement in a whole system, place-based way.

The Universal Offer will provide a way of supporting the entire sector to increase physical activity, reduce physical inactivity, reduce inequalities, and promote positive experiences for CYP by building on the already developed extensive tools and resources we have.

Supported by dedicated capacity, we'll build on our already extensive suite of tools and resources and work with key partners, within and beyond the sport and physical activity sector, to design an even more enhanced Universal Offer. These resources already cover a wide variety of themes and topics and include:

• Support to local clubs and National Governing Bodies (NGBs)
• Guidance for local authorities on creating and protecting the places and spaces that make it easier for people to be active.
• A suite of resources focussed on data, insight and learning.
• Various Learning and Development opportunities that support sector leadership of Uniting the Movement. 

We know that Sport England don’t ‘own’ all the current and future resources, and that many of our partners and the sector have and will continue to develop great tools and resources that will also form part of this offer. 

We'll begin a series of engagement with key partners and places to start to co-design what the new enhanced offer could be.

A Measurement, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework has been initially developed and approved for this programme of work.

This will enable Sport England and its partners to demonstrate progress, causality and impact at a place, programme, and population level over time.

The framework is informed by learning and insight from our MEL approach with Local Delivery Pilots.

Our National Evaluation and Learning Partner (NELP) will support further development and the launch of the framework over the coming weeks.