Activity Levels Increasing Across the Humber

23-04-2020

The latest Active Lives report covering the period of November 2018 to November 2019 by Sport England has shown that nationally before the coronavirus struck that activity levels were on the rise and inactivity was falling. It shows that 28.6 million adults were active i.e. doing at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week.

The Sport England article can be found here.

The Humber Area

For the Humber area there are some really positive figures being reported with the majority of adults, 60.6%, being active, which is a positive shift of 4.3% on the previous year. This shows that the Humber and all four Local Authority areas of the Humber is on trend with the national picture of activity levels increasing and inactivity falling.

Rising Activity Levels 

The report shows the increase in activity is being driven by rises in the numbers of women, adults aged 55+ and disabled people or people with long-term health conditions being active.

These are all areas where Sport England have focused significant investment in the last few years with campaigns such as This Girl Can and We Are Undefeatable, as well as more recent work with Demos on their home exercise radio show 10 Today which supports the over 70s to be more active.

Active Humber Comments

David Gent, CEO of Active Humber is impressed with the figures and says:

“The figures that have come out today are fantastic to see for the Humber area. It is great to see that people are valuing the benefits of physical activity and are making the time to ensure they are active. The benefits both physically and mentally of being active are huge and it is really important that we embed physical activity into our weekly routine to benefit our health both now and in the future.

It is great to see that the results are indicating that people in specific groups are being more active and we’d like to thank all of our partners that work with us and in their communities to support people to be active.”

Lastly, we know we are in unprecedented times with the situation around the coronavirus and we know people are facing tough times. Active Humber encourages you to stay active at home, take advantage of your daily exercise allowance but please do follow all of the Government advice and please do stay safe. For inspiration and ideas of how to do this please visit our web pages.

More Details to come from The Humber Area

The headline figures are interesting and over the coming weeks Active Humber will look beyond the initial statistics and dig deeper into data to help us understand the behaviours of people in our local areas which will help us to support the current trend of increasing activity levels.

In addition, Active Humber are really interested in understanding what local activity behaviours look like during the coronavirus period, recent national information has shown that some people are more active now than they were previously and we are really interested on how the current situation has changed behaviours for the better and how we maintain or encourage to be more active once restrictions begin to be lifted. Therefore, Active Humber will be looking to ask about behaviours in the near future.

To see the report on activity levels during the coronavirus period, please visit the Sport England website.