Pennine Lancashire’s Together an Active Future has helped in shaping the national plan from Sport England to invest £250 million in local communities to drive equal access to sport and physical activity.
The investment announcement builds on the great work that Together an Active Future and the other 11 Sport England Local Delivery Pilots have been doing in recent years, with Pennine Lancashire being one of the first places to work with Sport England in 2017. Together an Active Future has been investing in the local strengths of people and programs across multiple sectors within Burnley, Blackburn with Darwen, Hyndburn, Pendle, Ribble Valley and Rossendale. Focussing on new ways of working, beyond the traditional route of sport and leisure, addressing the breadth of influences on physical activity.
Building on our work within and across policy areas, our brilliant teams’ collaborative approaches create more physical activity opportunities, strengthen community capacity and tackle inequalities. The work is enabling people the freedom to be active in ways that suit them. We want to congratulate team TaAF and all of our partners who have all contributed to this exciting announcement.
Chief Exec for Sport England, Tim Hollingsworth, identifies the importance of working within communities in order to understand the challenges and barriers to being active and in doing so, ‘not assuming that national top-down programmes are going to be the answer for everyone.’
Claire Ramwell, Pennine Lancashire Strategic Lead, said: ‘‘It’s fantastic to see our work in Pennine Lancashire being recognised on a national scale and being used as a tool for decision making in Sport England’s plans to invest into new places – ensuring opportunities to be more active are available to all.’’
Through Together an Active Future, Pennine Lancashire will continue to be a Sport England Place Partner, and welcomes the opportunity to support in deepening the impact of existing work in local towns and villages. We look forward to collaborating with Active Lancashire to share what has been learned so far with emerging Place Partnerships in other areas.
Find out more about some of TaAF’s recent impacts here:
TaAF Demonstrates Population Level Decrease in Physical Inactivity
The Lifestyle Hub: Overcoming the barriers of physical activity in our local context
Collaborating across organisations, Burnley an #OutdoorTown
Addressing inequality and intersectionality: Active Madrassahs
