Government teams up with sports stars to launch new physical activity drive

• New sports strategy sets national participation targets of an additional 2.5 million adults and 1 million children active by 2030
• New taskforce, led by Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, Sports Minister Stuart Andrew and former England Rugby Union international Ugo Monye, to drive strategy forward and track progress on these goals
• Announcement builds upon unprecedented government funding for grassroots sport facilities and opening up access to school sport across the country

The Government will join forces with former sports stars, health professionals and fitness experts to help an additional 3.5 million adults and children get physically active by 2030, as part of a major national activity drive.

Appointed by the Prime Minister and Culture Secretary, the new National Physical Activity Taskforce will be led by the Culture Secretary, Lucy Frazer, Sports Minister Stuart Andrew and former England Rugby Union international Ugo Monye as an independent co-chair.

It comes as part of the Government’s new sport strategy published today. ‘Get Active: A strategy for the future of sport and physical activity’ sets out a blueprint to improve the nation’s health and fitness, enhance corporate governance in the sport sector and make it more resilient to future challenges at elite and grassroots level.

The new participation targets - to have over 2.5 million more active adults and over 1 million more active children by 2030 - are intended to reach people of all ages and backgrounds, and meet the UK Chief Medical Officers’ guidance that:

• Adults should aim to carry out at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week
• Children should aim to carry out at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day

Figures from the Sport England Active Lives Survey indicate that 25% of adults are currently deemed to be ‘inactive’ in England, with over 11 million doing less than 30 minutes of activity in total a week. Meanwhile figures indicate that 53% of children and young people are not meeting the CMO’s guidance of at least 60 minutes of activity a day - with 23% being fairly active, but 30% doing less than 30 minutes a day.

NHS statistics from 2021-2022 indicate that almost a quarter (23%) of year 6 children were obese in England, an increase of 3% from 2018-19, the last figures recorded prior to the COVID-19 pandemic - making a national activity drive all the more important.

As part of this new strategy, the expert taskforce will advise on how to deliver on these targets, challenge how ambitions are being delivered and hold the Government, National Governing Bodies, the physical activity sector and schools to account for delivering the targets at both the national and local level.

Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said:

As Culture Secretary I want to increase opportunities for everyone to find the sport or activity that they love, which will help them be healthy and happy. Whether that’s playing with friends on the basketball court, getting on your bike or working out in your living room we want everybody to find a sport or physical activity for them.

Our new taskforce, jointly led with Ugo Monye, will work across government and the sports industry to turn these ambitious targets into a reality, helping to break down barriers to help people enjoy the benefits of getting active.

Through our support for school sports and our continuing investment of millions of pounds in facilities in local communities across the country we are making sure that people have welcoming and accessible places where they can get active.

National Physical Activity Taskforce co-chair and former England Rugby Union international Ugo Monye said:

As a former international player and dad to young children, I know the importance of instilling the benefits of sport and physical activity.

It is clear that a major effort is needed to get Britain moving and boost our national health. I’m determined to use my experience and drive forward this ambitious strategy.

It is the first sport strategy to be published since 2015, and builds upon the Government’s record investment of almost £400 million in grassroots facilities, including in multi-sport facilities, swimming pools and park tennis courts, to ensure communities across the country have access to high quality, safe facilities.

This is alongside investment of over £600 million for school sport and PE over the next two years, with a focus on making it clear that girls have the same access as boys, building on the success of the Lionesses at UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 last year and in their recent FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 campaign.

The strategy also sets the vision for the future of the sector in the country.

In recent years, the responsibilities of sport governing bodies around integrity issues, such as misconduct (including bullying, discrimination and safeguarding issues), doping and corruption, have highlighted concerns on how some athletes have been treated, the mechanisms for raising complaints and how disputes are resolved at elite and grassroots level.

The Government is clear that sport needs to be a welcoming, inclusive and fair environment that participants and their parents or guardians can have confidence in.

In light of this, a call for evidence is being launched today on current experiences of how issues and concerns in sport across the UK are dealt with in the sector, and how these could be strengthened. The call for evidence is open to participants in sport, parents and guardians, coaches, athlete support personnel, sports governing bodies, academics and other relevant stakeholders.

Sports Minister Stuart Andrew said:

It is vital that everyone participating in sport feels safe and secure. We want to ensure that we have the strongest possible systems for addressing sport integrity issues and that we remain at the forefront of global efforts around fairness and inclusion in sport.

UK Sport and Sport England have taken significant steps to improve safeguarding including the revision of protections for children. The Government has also strengthened positions of trust legislation to now include sports coaches.

I urge everyone with relevant experiences to contribute to this call for evidence process.

The new sport strategy also seeks to ensure that the sector moves towards a more sustainable future, both financially and environmentally.

DCMS will support the sector to attract additional forms of investment to help the sector continue to grow and thrive, including new sports and areas with significant growth potential, such as women’s sport. The department will also highlight best practice, examples of good governance, and work with the tech sector to identify innovative solutions to help increase participation and physical activity.

It follows the Government providing more than £1 billion in financial support to the sector during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The department will also continue to work with UK Sport, host cities and sporting bodies to bid for, and successfully host, major sporting events that deliver significant socio-economic benefit across the UK, to maintain our world-leading track record in this area. DCMS will commission additional analysis of the economic value of these events to support future decision making. It follows the recent success of England hosting UEFA Women’s EURO 2022, the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and the Rugby League World Cup.

The Government’s Gold Framework guidance has been updated to help DCMS and UK Sport work successfully with the sector to keep bringing the world’s biggest and best major sporting events to the UK. It comes at a time when the UK and Ireland are bidding to host UEFA EURO 2028, with a decision due later this year.

These events are a core element of the Government’s strategy to not only provide significant benefits across the country, but inspire people to get more active, and create the next generation of sports stars.

DCMS will also champion the importance of the sector prioritising the development of its own environmental sustainability initiatives and encourage the sharing of best practice from across sport and physical activity.

This is expected to help the sector to deliver on UK Sport’s goal for high-performance sport to be having a net positive impact on the environment by 2040, and for sport national governing bodies to have reduced their emissions by 50% by 2030.

Notes to editors

• The full list of members of the National Physical Activity Taskforce will be published in due course.

• Ugo Monye played 14 times for England, 441 times for his only club Harlequins and played twice for the British and Irish Lions on their 2009 tour to South Africa. He won both the second division and then the Premiership title with Harlequins, as well as winning the European Rugby Challenge Cup. Following his retirement in 2015, Monye became a respected television and radio pundit. In 2021, he was appointed chair of the Rugby Football Union’s independent advisory group on diversity and became a team captain on the BBC’s ‘Question of Sport’ quiz show. He also sits on the board of the Women’s Sports Trust.

• The new physical activity targets aligns with the Government’s focus on improving school sport where we have provided a multi-year funding settlement for both the PE and Sport Pupil Premium and School Games Organisers. Alongside a renewed focus on accessibility and equality with the launch of a new kitemark to ensure equal access to PE and sport for girls and boys and further guidance to encourage schools to deliver 2 hours of PE a week.

• The focus of the call for evidence is on organised recreational sport, talent pathway programmes, Olympic and Paralympic sport and professional sport.

• The call for evidence will remain open for responses until 11 October. A Government response is expected to be published later this year.

• Following the Government’s Sporting Future strategy in 2015, the Government commissioned Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson to produce a Duty of Care in Sport Report, published in 2017, which delivered a series of recommendations for action across a number of areas of the sector.

• Since the report was published, the Government has taken action and worked with the sector to strengthen provision around safety and welfare, by:

  • Extending ‘positions of trust’ law to protect teenagers from abuse by making it illegal for sports coaches to engage in sexual activity with 16 and 17-year-olds they coach through the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
  • Publishing landmark guidance to reduce the incidence and raise awareness of concussion in grassroots sport.
  • Working with UK Sport and Sport England to introduce the Code for Sports Governance, ensuring improved standards around welfare and diversity in publicly funded sports organisations.
  • Leading work with the sports and mental health sectors to deliver a Mental Health and Elite Sport Action Plan
  • Arm’s Length Bodies have also introduced new guidance and support services to help sports organisations deal with safeguarding issues, strengthen mental health support and deal with complaints.
  • UK Sport has introduced an independent complaints and disclosure system to help improve safeguarding.