Long-term increase in activity levels positive but further action needed to tackle inequalities

The number of people classed as inactive - averaging fewer than 30 minutes a week - has remained steady over the last year and 25.7% of the population (11.9m) are in this category compared to 25.8% 12 months ago.

Key findings

Our Active Lives Adult Survey Report also gives us a detailed understanding of the factors that influence how likely a person is to be active.

A person's age, sex, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic group, whether they have a disability or long-term health condition, and the place they live in are all significant factors impacting our relationship with sport and physical activity.

The report underlines that many longstanding inequalities remain, with women, those from lower socio-economic groups and Black and Asian people still less likely to be active than others.

It's why we've put tackling these inequalities at the heart of our Uniting the Movement strategy and, next week, we'll be announcing details of our new £160m Movement Fund - which will replace a number of smaller programmes including our Small Grants and Active Together funds, making our funding easier to access than ever before and ensuring our investment is targeted where it can make the biggest difference.

The report also shows that where you live impacts on how likely you are to be active, with those living in more deprived places less likely to be active than those in places that are less deprived, from a high of 79% active in Brighton and Hove to a low of just 49% active in Barking and Dagenham.

This is why we're investing £250m in local communities with higher levels of deprivation across England.

Where we have piloted this approach, the places we have worked have outperformed expectations, with activity levels growing more rapidly than other comparable areas of a similar demographic.

We're now expanding this approach to 80-100 new areas where we think we can make the biggest difference.

More positively, while the older a person gets the less likely they are to be physically active, we've seen activity levels continue to grow among older adults over the past 12 months.

Activity levels for those aged 55+ are the highest they've been since records began, with those aged over 75 particularly driving this trend. Currently, 42.8% of people aged over 75 are physically active compared to just 33.4% between November 2015 and November 2016.

Today's publication also outlines types of activities people are taking part in and how this is changing over time.

Active travel and fitness activities, which were significantly impacted by the pandemic, continue to recover as over a million more adults (+2.1%) have walked or cycled for travel and 802,000 (+1.5%) more have taken part in fitness activities compared to 12 months ago.

Furthermore, swimming numbers are now back in line with pre-pandemic (November 2018-19) levels following an increase of 400,000 (0.8%) compared to 12 months ago, while the number of people playing team sports continues to increase and is now at the highest level seen for six years.

How this compares to our findings on children's activity levels

Today's report complements our Active Lives Children and Young People Survey we published in December.

That report, which focussed on children's activity levels across the 2022-23 academic year, showed activity levels were back in line with those recorded in the 2018-2019 academic year, the last full year before the pandemic, and are once again higher than in 2017-18 when we launched the survey.

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