Covering the 12 months from May 2018 to May 2019, the new Sport England Active Lives report provides an update on the sporting and physical activity behaviours of adults in England. It also highlights the contribution made by volunteers, and the impact of taking part in sport and physical activity on wider outcomes such as mental wellbeing and community development.
The latest increase of more than 500,000 takes us to 28.6 million regularly active adults, the highest activity levels ever recorded. Conversely, a reduction of 122,000 means that inactivity amongst adults in England is also at the lowest level ever. These results also reveal that previous increases have been retained, the gender gap continues to narrow and there is growth in the activity levels of disabled adults and those with a long term health condition. There is also a positive association between taking part in sport and physical activity and mental wellbeing, as well as individual, social and community development.
There are still audiences where we are not seeing significant change and where a continued, collaborative focus is needed so that everyone can benefit from the positive impact of sport and physical activity. In particular, those from less affluent families and those from Black and Asian backgrounds continue to be less active. Volunteering levels remain unchanged over the last 12 months, and we continue to see lower rates of volunteering for women and those from the lowest income families.
The key Tees Valley results are as follows;
Depending on the number of minutes of moderate intensity equivalent (MIE)* physical activity, people are described as being:
• Inactive – Doing less than 30 minutes a week
• Fairly Active – Doing 30-149 minutes a week
• Active – Doing at least 150 minutes a week
The full report provides the headlines, and there is the opportunity to dig deeper into the results via links to more in depth data tables which can be found in the corner of each page. The next Active Lives report will be the Year 2 Active Lives Children and Young People report which covers academic year 2018/19 and will be published on 5 December.
Posted on 25th October 2019