Significant growth in activity levels for older adults and disabled people but more work to do to support those living in deprived areas
The number of people playing sport and taking part in physical activity in England is at the highest level on record, according to Sport England’s latest Active Lives Adult Survey Report.
The new figures show that, between November 2023 and November 2024, 63.7% of the adult population met the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines of doing 150 minutes, or more, of moderate intensity physical activity a week.
That’s equivalent to 30 million adults in England playing sport or taking part in physical activity every week – up more than 2.4m from when we first published the survey results in 2016.
The number of inactive adults, those doing less than 30 minutes of activity a week, is down, with this number falling by 121,000 in the last 12 months.
This reflects significant progress, especially considering the huge disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and is testament to the hard work of many organisations across the sport and physical activity sector.
Posted on 29th April 2025