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Five years of Uniting the Movement

We’re five years into our ongoing mission to ensure everyone can play sport and take part in physical activity – and later this year we’ll be unveiling our plan for the next phase.

26th January 2026

It’s five years today since we launched Uniting the Movement, our long-term vision to transform lives and communities across England through sport and physical activity.

Conceived during the Covid-19 pandemic, our strategy reimagined how our sector works, collaborates and supports people who have traditionally faced the greatest barriers to getting active.

We’ve come a long way since then but, as we mark this five-year milestone, we’re firmly focused on the road ahead – because we know there is still more to do. 

Two girls contest the ball during a game of hockey on a grass pitch.

Under our new chief executive Simon Hayes, we’re preparing to set out our renewed approach for the next phase of the strategy and re-establish our role in driving long-term change.

The new plan will be a fresh call to our sector to join us as we build on what’s worked so far and collectively address the challenges that remain.

Simon said: "Over the past five years, Uniting the Movement has helped build a more confident, collaborative and purpose-driven sport and physical activity sector – one better equipped to deliver lasting change.

"Together, we’ve taken important steps towards ensuring more people in England can experience the life-changing benefits of playing sport and being active.

"But while there is much to be proud of, the evidence is clear that opportunity is still too often shaped by where you live, your bank balance, ethnicity or sex. Addressing these inequalities remains key to our work.

"As we move into the next phase of our 10-year strategy, we’re clear-eyed about the work still ahead.

"Later this year, we’ll publish our plan for the next five years, setting out how we’ll focus our energy and resources where they can have the greatest positive impact, building on everything we’ve learned so far."

Uniting the Movement: strong foundations to build on

Over the past 12 months, we’ve continued to build momentum on the key issues at the heart of our strategy.

Our most recent Active Lives surveys show that the numbers of adults and children and young people playing sport and taking part in physical activity in England are at their highest levels since we started the survey in 2017-18.

Facts and figures from our work in 2025

Infographic featuring icons, facts and figures about Sport England's achievements in 2025, all of which are detailed in the text that follows on the webpage.

Other headlines from the last 12 months of our strategy:

Community sport and physical activity generates £123 billion in social value, according to our updated research.

More than 150 leaders have received dedicated coaching and mentoring as part of the £5 million Leading the Movement programme we launched in June to tackle inequalities.

We continued to advocate for the importance of protecting playing fields and open spaces, responding to 1,065 statutory planning applications received in 2024/25, as well as helping secure 144 Community Use Agreements through the planning process.

We Like the Way You Move, the latest phase of our groundbreaking This Girl Can campaign, achieved success among its target audience, with 83% of campaign recognisers on low incomes saying it increased their understanding that being active for even 10 minutes can bring immediate benefits.

We awarded three more years of National Lottery funding to We Are Undefeatable, the campaign that supports people with long-term health conditions to be active.

51% of our partners now have or are near to having a credible environmental sustainability plan in place – and we rolled out free, tailored support for all our long-term partners.

We invested a further £700,000 in OpenActive, the sector-wide initiative that is aiming to make it easier for people to find opportunities to get active through better use of data.

A new report from the Safe Sport project we jointly lead, which aims to establish a unified approach to safeguarding in sport, presented five distinct recommendations.

Our research on the connection between digital inclusion and participation found that 43 of our 53 new Place Expansion Partnerships (more below) are also in areas where internet access is at its lowest.

We led our sector’s response to the NHS’ 10-Year Health Plan with five core policy asks; the final version published in July 2025 made clear reference to sport and physical activity.

Our work in places

Our place-based approach, rooted in local knowledge and collaboration, has been central to helping more people find ways to move that work for their lives.

Over the past year, we’ve strengthened our work with local partners, helping us meet people where they are, understand their priorities, and remove the practical and cultural barriers that so often limit opportunities to be active.

The major milestones included:

Children and young people

Working with the sector to ensure children and young people have positive experiences of sport and physical activity has been a key priority of our strategy so far – and will continue to be over the coming years.

Some of our work in this area over the last year has included:

Other highlights from 2025

We’ve continued to collaborate with our partners in other core areas of work during the last 12 months. Here’s a flavour of what we’ve been doing:

Active environments

  • More than half a million (525,000) people visited wellbeing trails, which we helped deliver with Forestry England, creating nature-based wellbeing activities in the nation’s forests.
  • We helped train 100 people from global majority ethnic communities to become qualified walk leaders, working with 15 community and national organisations.

Health

  • The publication of NHS England’s Four Ways Forward, which we co-developed since 2021, marked a step-change in its approach to harnessing the benefits of physical activity in healthcare.
  • Through our influence, sport and physical activity was embedded in the government’s Men’s Health Strategy, published in November 2025. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion

  • A total of 3,000 qualified and student social workers have taken part in Disability Rights UK’s Moving Social Work programme, in which we’ve invested. It aims to build social workers’ confidence and capability to support disabled people to be more active.
  • We formed new partnerships with Neurodiverse Sport and Autism Action, aimed at making sport and physical activity more accessible for neurodivergent people.

Looking ahead to 2026

As we prepare to publish our plan for the next period of Uniting the Movement, our focus remains clear: to invest where need is greatest and champion the transformative power of movement, working with partners across health, education and local government.

Too many people are still missing out on the benefits of an active lifestyle, with participation varying greatly among different demographic groups.  

Women and girls, those from lower socio-economic groups or less affluent families, and Black and Asian people of all ages are still less likely to be active than others. 

That’s why reducing those inequalities will continue to be a relentless focus of our work in the coming years.

Through our unique foundational role as a sports council, as set out in our Royal Charter, we’ll develop community sport and active recreation from the ground up across the country, so that more people can benefit from the health, wealth, hope and happiness it brings.  

Our plan will build on what we’ve learned so far – from the importance of positive experiences for children and young people to the vital role that active environments and community-led initiatives play in supporting long-term change.

We’re determined to use this next phase to deepen our impact and ensure movement becomes a normal, accessible part of everyday life for people across England.

Find out more

Explore our long-term strategy for sport and physical activity in England.

Uniting the Movement

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