Support to unite sector in place-based work

We’re rolling out £25 million across England to help Active Partnerships create the conditions for change and to support different parts of the sector to work together, so that everyone can be physically active.

These resources will also help partners evaluate the impact they're having in their most important communities.

This investment is a key aspect of our approach to Place, whereby £250 million of National Lottery and Exchequer funding is being invested into local communities across England in the next five years, to ensure those in greatest need are able to get active.

Access to sport and physical activity isn’t a level playing field. Where a person lives, their background, bank balance and the environment around them have a huge impact on how likely they are to be physically active.

Our Place Universal Offer will support the whole sector to address these inequalities and help level up access to sport and physical activity across England and deliver on the ambitions of our Uniting the Movement strategy.

The national network of 43 Active Partnerships are perfectly poised to help us achieve this. They work in these places every day, know where there are inequalities and they know and understand the people, communities, stakeholders, organisations and systems there deeply.

They work side-by-side with the community to understand the barriers that exist, and the needs of their community, to embed positive behaviours and bring about change to get more people moving.

Our Place Universal Offer recognises this and will enable all stakeholders and partners at a local level – leaders and policy and decision-makers from the community and voluntary sector, local authorities, the NHS and more – to work together to drive forward their place strategy.
 

Our support will give these places the tools, resources, learning and capability to work more collaboratively and achieve the systemic change that's needed at a local level to address the barriers to getting people active.

By galvanising the system in this way, we know we can bring about lasting and sustainable active places.

Through the Place Universal Offer, we'll provide universal support to all places in England, but with targeted interventions that are scaled and proportionate to the level of local need and disadvantage.

This will ensure every part of the country is supported with their place strategy, including those that have not been selected by us for targeted investment as part of our wider place expansion.

Working closely with 10 Active Partnerships, we’ve tested this process and spent time developing our offer, in partnership with the sector, so we’re confident in the impact we can have.

These 10 ‘test and learn’ Active Partnerships will be the first to receive support and potential investment.

From there, the roll-out to other Active Partnerships will continue at pace, with the ambition being for all places to receive support and potential investment to deliver the Place Universal Offer in 2025/2026.
 

We want every place to feel included and part of the roll-out of the Place Universal Offer. This will give all active partnerships the opportunity to engage in the process and feel empowered to build the conditions for change that are right for them.

We recognise that no two places are the same. Active Partnerships will therefore be given full trust and autonomy to direct their resources based on local insight, need and readiness, overlayed with our place needs classification tool, to drive forward the principles of place-based working.