12 Nov 2014
ukactive report identifies ‘seismic shift’ in councils’ physical activity spending
BY Jak Phillips
Public health spending on tackling England’s inactivity epidemic will double next year, marking a “seismic shift” in local authority thinking, according to a new ukactive report.
Steps to solving inactivity – which follows last year’s Turning the tide of inactivity report – finds that 70 per cent of councils have raised their allocated budget on physical activity for 2014-15 compared to 2013-14. The report notes that 29 per cent of people in England are physically inactive (meaning they do less than 30 minutes of moderate physical activity per week), an issue that Public Health England said recently leads to one in six deaths and costs the country £7.4bn a year.
As was the case with the previous report, Steps to solving inactivity examines local authority spending on battling inactivity, highlighting that on average, councils are allocating four per cent of their public health grant for tackling inactivity in the current spending period, compared to just two per cent in 2013/14.
The latest report also presents the findings of the largest review of physical activity programmes to date. The review found that only two out of 952 submissions could objectively evidence impact on participants, prompting recommendations for more robust evaluation of physical activity programmes so that the most effective can be commissioned and replicated at scale with demonstrable impact. Similar conclusions were drawn in a recently published white paper based on the views of exercise referral experts.
Additional recommendations in the ukactive report include the designation of a physical activity champion on each local authority’s Health and Wellbeing Board, responsible for ensuring initiatives are compatible with and appropriate for the needs of the local community. Further to this point, the authors call for physical activity planning to be made a central pillar in areas such as public health, social care, education, environmental planning and transport policies.
ukactive CEO David Stalker said: “We’ve known for some time that we’re facing an uphill battle to reverse the inactivity trend and while the increase in funding represents a seismic shift in thinking amongst local authorities, building a sound evidence base to underpin the activity will be the ultimate difference between success and failure.”
From an industry perspective, there have been ongoing discussions as to how the physical activity sector can help tackle the nation’s inactivity crisis by facilitating GP-prescribed exercise referrals. During his keynote speech at LIW 2014, Stalker stated that now is the time for the physical activity sector to step forward and take action if it is to become a ‘central pillar of the nation’s public health strategy.’ He outlined five key areas where the industry must improve if this is to be achieved.
Meanwhile, Public Health England (PHE) recently published Everybody Active, Every Day, a framework for nationwide action to combat the physical inactivity epidemic. the framework was co-produced with more than 1,000 physical activity leaders and calls for action from providers and commissioners in a range of sectors to effect societal change and make physical activity the norm.
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