Adult Physical Activity JSNA (2025)

Overarching recommendations:

1. Prioritise increasing physical activity offers aimed at groups that are less likely to meet the UK CMOs’ Physical Activity Guidelines (women, people living in deprived areas, people living with a disability or long-term health condition).
2. Localisation of national campaigns that target messaging to people at higher risk of physical inactivity, including those living with long-term conditions (We Are Undefeatable) and women (This Girl Can). Plus, the use of local campaigns which encourage more everyday movement (Joyful Movement Campaign).
3. Provide cost-effective, flexible and inclusive physical activity options to support working age residents, particularly those in the 35-44 age bracket to be more active.
4. Collaborate with partners to provide support to those with disabilities to access a range of physical activity offers that meet their needs.
5. Increase the awareness of, and participation opportunities for, muscle strengthening activities, particularly amongst women.
6. Support a network of physical activity champions across health, care, workplace, and community settings to raise awareness of the benefits of physical activity and who can signpost to local opportunities.
7. Support inclusive physical activity programmes for people with mobility issues and long-term conditions to ensure continuity. Reduce reliance on individual champions by building resilience through partnerships, succession planning, and ongoing workforce/capacity building.
8. Engage local businesses, GPs, and community organisations to develop partnerships that ensure equitable access to physical activity opportunities for all, but particularly for marginalised groups.
9. Promote initiatives that integrate physical activity into primary care, including brief intervention training for all staff, embedding physical activity pathways into existing social prescribing models and linking patients directly to existing offers e.g. falls prevention.

Barriers to being active

1. Increase provision of more affordable physical activity options by working with sports, leisure, community and VCFSE sectors to help widen the range of sport and physical activity offers that enable all community members to take part.
2. Consider how to promote and support those who feel they have lack of time. This may be via targeted messaging or promoting physical activities and opportunities that are time-efficient, such as the NHS Active 10, every step counts, active travel, and home workouts.
3. Collaborate with partners to provide family and intergenerational activities, to remove childcare barriers to physical activity.
4. Work with primary care and secondary care colleagues to understand how health issues can function as barriers to physical activity and address these. Consider how to use health as a reason and enabler for physical activity e.g., Moving Medicine.
5. Work with working age women to understand what could support them to be more active, use this to help to shape the offer.
6. Consider innovative ways to tackle lack of confidence, people being afraid to exercise alone or not knowing what is on offer.
7. Work with employers to incorporate opportunities for physical activity into the working day.
8. Develop inclusive programmes such as family-friendly sessions with childcare support, confidence-building initiatives, and activities specifically for older adults and those living with health conditions.
9. Provide specialised programmes for people with mobility issues or chronic conditions (e.g., arthritis, fibromyalgia, long COVID), and expand accessible sports like wheelchair basketball and walking netball.
10. Introduce a broader range of free or low-cost (consider using terminology ‘fully funded’ or ‘partially funded’) activities, particularly during off-peak hours.
11. Offer flexible session times (early mornings, evenings, weekends) to accommodate diverse schedules and commitments.
12. Develop online and hybrid activity programmes to ensure broader participation, including options for home-based physical activity.

Where people are active

1. Foster social connections by developing community walking groups, yoga clubs, non-competitive classes (e.g. Zumba) and non-competitive sports such as walking football and social running.
2. Introduce peer support systems or buddy programmes to maintain engagement and provide mutual encouragement.
3. Collaborate with local businesses and community organisations to co-create and deliver initiatives for marginalised groups, ensuring inclusivity.
4. Increase the use of spaces where females like to be active, e.g. community halls.
5. Promote the use of parks and greenspaces on a more regular basis, ensure safety and lighting are key considerations in redevelopments.
6. Create a shared, borough-wide communications plan using positive, inclusive, everyday messaging.
7. Use community hubs, local champions, and digital tools to improve visibility.
8. Ensure campaigns reach digitally excluded and underserved groups.

Wider considerations

1. Normalise conversations around women’s health topics like menstruation, menopause, and physical exertion, creating a supportive environment for women and girls.
2. Provide education and awareness programmes to inspire women and girls to take an active interest in their health, including promoting period dignity and menstrual health education. Programmes to support trusted figures as well as individuals.
3. Ensure equal representation of women and girls in sports, facilities, marketing, and policy decisions, and encourage leadership roles within physical activity programmes.
4. Create accessible, inclusive environments by providing appropriate toilets, showers, changing facilities, and sanitary products, as well as comfortable and appropriate kit.
5. Advocate for equal access to sports, facilities, coaching, and equipment, regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, or ability, and support mixed-gender teams to break stereotypes.

Service use

1. Consider a focussed push and incentives to encourage more younger adults to take out membership to Brio.
2. Promote the Workfit offer across more local employers and businesses.
3. Consider how to engage females and males over the age of 44 in league football.
4. Promote Parkrun as a weekly opportunity to walk, run or jog a 5km route.

Active travel

1. Expand and maintain local walking, wheeling and cycling routes with enhanced lighting and safety features, in line with the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan.
2. Prioritise pedestrians and cyclists in local transport planning, ensuring safe routes for active travel.
3. Promote active commuting with safe and accessible cycling/walking infrastructure.
4. Use the Design Code to detail how cycling, walking and wheeling should be incorporated into new developments, providing convenient and attractive routes.
5. Encourage and support workplaces to produce active travel plans.
6. Work with communities to understand why they choose to travel actively to work or not. Support more employees to travel actively.
7. Implement workplace wellness initiatives, offering opportunities for employees to be active during work hours.
8. Collaborate with employers to support the integration of movement-friendly policies.

Open space and sports facilities

1. Engage with local communities and support the maintenance, re-purposing, or enhancement of green space in communities with reduced access and increased need.
2. Support local clubs, schools, leisure providers and the council with improving and increasing the quality and number of sports facilities and ensure equitable access to facilities for all community members via the promotion of Community Use Agreements.
3. Ensure all facilities are fully accessible, with wheelchair-friendly equipment and inclusive designs, including adequate public transport links to assets and green spaces.
4. Integrate physical activity-friendly policies into planning frameworks to protect existing open spaces and promote new activity-oriented developments.
5. Develop a support network that helps small sports and leisure clubs to flourish and develop plans to improve their facilities, with the aim of increasing the range of participation opportunities for women, those living in the most deprived areas or people aged over 65 years.
6. Explore the Right to Grow initiative, supporting communities to utilise unused council land to grow, spend time outdoors and increase physical activity.