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Yesterday we published the final report for Impact ’25 programme, our Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 legacy programme. 

The programme was delivered by the Rugby Football Union (RFU) in partnership with the UK government, Sport England and UK Sport.

Backed by £14.55 million of government investment, and driven by the incredible commitment of clubs, volunteers, coaches, match officials and players, Impact '25 has helped transform opportunities for women and girls across England.

The ongoing legacy

There is a huge amount to celebrate with Impact ’25. But we can’t stop there.

Through Every Rose: Our Time, the RFU's five-year action plan published shortly after last year’s Women’s World Cup, we set an ambitious target of reaching 100,000 active female players by 2030, including 70,000 club-registered players.

Last year, almost 48,000 women and girls were playing at rugby clubs across England, and now schools, colleges and universities will play a critical role in reaching that ambition in the next four years.

Our growing workforce across the education sector is introducing more young people to the game through T1 Rugby, an accessible non-contact format that retains the unique characteristics of rugby union while providing an easy entry point into the sport.

Partnerships with organisations such as Scouts and Guides are helping us reach new audiences, while the growth in girls' and women's sections at rugby clubs means there are now more opportunities than ever for participants to continue their rugby journey.

Alongside participation growth, we are committed to ensuring women and girls can thrive in the game.

And our work on female health and wellbeing continues to develop.

This summer we announced a landmark partnership with Women in Sport and became the first major British sport to launch a standalone anti-sexism and misogyny policy, part of a broader commitment to making rugby safer, more inclusive and more welcoming.

The importance of partnership

The success of Impact '25, and what’s been happening since, demonstrate what can be achieved when different organisations and the wider community game come together behind a shared vision to drive the women’s and girls’ games forward.

We’re hugely grateful to Sport England for their involvement in Impact ’25 and value their ongoing support.

There remains huge potential in women’s and girls’ rugby, and we must not take our foot off the pedal.  

If you type National Lottery into any internet search engine, you’ll immediately be greeted with the strapline 'Changing Lives Every Day'.

And while for most, immediate thoughts might turn to the joy of winning a life-changing jackpot, for nearly 20 years I have been privileged to work at the heart of an organisation that distributes Good Causes funding.

This has allowed me to see every day how National Lottery money helps people and communities change lives.

In Sport England’s investment management team, we recognise how lucky we are to have a role that supports organisations and communities to make a positive difference through National Lottery funding.

And we also accept the responsibility and diligence that comes with the role, given that we are investing lottery players’ and public money.

Every day we see the very best of our communities – in the ideas that they talk to us about, in the applications that they send to us and through the impact their funded projects have.

And as the total number of people reached by projects funded by the Movement Fund nears 500,000, it is evident how National Lottery funding is helping communities become more active every day.

Making funding accessible

Making it easier for everybody to apply for Sport England funding is a key pledge in our Uniting the Movement strategy.

The Movement Fund now operates with more open and less restrictive criteria, and it has become a single point of entry for grants and crowdfunding opportunities.

Applicants also have clearer expectations of our process and, as a result, we’re seeing National Lottery funding support a diverse range of projects.

Whether we're talking about first-time applicants, organisations that have received funding before or organisations that are brand new or well-established, the Movement Fund is helping more communities access the funding to make their projects a reality.

Like Par Track, which was awarded £10,000 to professionally deep clean and reline Cornwall's only UK Athletics licensed athletics track, helping them sustain opportunities for athletics, but also to support people of all ages to be active and to come together as a community.

Getting funding to where it is needed the most

The simplicity and openness of our Movement Fund is giving communities and organisations the freedom to identify local needs and to bring forward their own ideas too, enabling us to get National Lottery funding to where it is needed the most.

And 72% of funded projects through the Movement Fund are reaching people who are less likely to be active and that are in places where more need exists.

Funding is also helping organisations break down barriers to physical activity in their communities.

For example, Dance Mojo have been able to expand their Zumba sessions and have more impact in their community through their National Lottery funding support.

Additional targeted sessions have also helped the organisation remove financial barriers to participation, enabling people experiencing financial hardship or accessibility challenges to access tailored activities that otherwise would have been out of reach.

Meeting people and communities where they are at

Within the investment management team, we try to spend as much time as possible talking with the communities and visiting them too.

Whether that’s attending local events and funding fairs, or working with trusted local partners to share information and data about what we fund and where it goes.

Since January our dedicated investment advisers have had more than 38,500 interactions with people contacting our funding advice service for support and guidance.

Meeting more people and their communities where they are at, helps us understand their needs and it ensures we fund projects that provide opportunities for people to be themselves, like the activities delivered by The Joshua Tree.

Their National Lottery funding has enabled them to offer an inclusive physical activity and wellness programme for children and families affected by cancer, giving children a sense of their childhood back.

Something that’s key, because as explained by the organisation:

“When a child’s life is filled with hospitals (…) and worry, the opportunity to feel in control of their body, use it positively, and experience joy and confidence is incredibly powerful."

National Lottery funding really makes a huge difference by helping people feel welcome, confident, connected and able to take part in sport and physical activity in ways that work and matter to them.

This is why, every day, we feel privileged to play our part in turning lottery players’ contributions into opportunities that help communities change lives.

If we want more people to be active, we need to start by understanding them and the places where they live.

It’s an important shift in how we think about physical activity, because being active is not just about whether there is a sports facility nearby or whether someone knows about a local exercise class.

It is shaped by the environment around us, our circumstances, our confidence, our connections and whether we feel that opportunities to be active are really for people like us.

Building from local knowledge

That is why our investment in places is putting communities at the heart of our approach.

Through our place-based investment, made possible through National Lottery funding alongside Exchequer investment, we are working with communities across England where levels of inactivity are highest and where people can face some of the greatest barriers to being active.

The starting point is listening, because locals understand their communities better than anyone.

They know what works, what doesn't, which places feel welcoming and which ones don't, and what gets in the way of being active. They also know the strengths that already exist – the people, organisations, spaces and relationships that can make a difference.

Our job is to help bring those strengths together.

That’s why we’re working alongside local authorities, Active Partnerships, health organisations, voluntary and community groups, schools, sport and physical activity organisations and most importantly local residents, to get more people active.

Practical examples of our place work 

Rather than deciding what a community needs from the outside, we’re creating the space for people locally to help shape the solutions themselves.

We can see what this looks like across the places we work.

In Doncaster, more than 2,500 residents have helped create a community-run 'Friends of' group that now independently delivers physical activity events in local parks.

In Bradford, the JU:MP programme has used insight from children, families and schools to shape action, contributing to more than 70 additional minutes of physical activity per child each week.

And in Blackpool, a youth leadership programme, co-designed with 16-25-year-olds, has brought 20 young people into leadership spaces to help shape decisions.

These are places with different challenges, but the common thread is that local people are helping to define both the problem and its solutions, which is important in communities where inactivity is closely connected to wider inequalities.

In this sense, our Active Lives research shows that those from lower-income households, some ethnic minority communities, disabled people and older adults can face additional barriers to being active.

And our latest data brings this into sharp focus: 53.8% of adults in the least affluent groups are active, compared with 73.2% of the most affluent.

Tackling difficulties for moving

Those barriers are rarely about motivation alone.

They can include cost, transport, safety, confidence, access to facilities and green spaces, caring responsibilities or simply not feeling that traditional opportunities are designed with them in mind.

Our place-based approach allows us to look at those issues from the ground up and it’s where the power of local knowledge becomes so important.

Because a solution that works brilliantly in one community may not work in another.

The role of place-based investment is therefore not to impose a single model, but to support communities to develop approaches that reflect their own needs and assets.

Rather than simply funding individual activities, we’re investing in the relationships, infrastructure and local leadership that are helping change how communities think about and support physical activity.

That is a different kind of investment and one that takes time.

More than sport

We need to understand not just whether people have taken part in an activity, but whether the local system around them is changing.

There are many questions involved, including:

• Are organisations working together differently?
• Do communities have a stronger voice?
• Are opportunities becoming more accessible?
• Are people who have traditionally been less active beginning to see physical activity as something that belongs in their lives?

These are the changes that will help make our progress sustainable.

There is also a wider opportunity here because when people come together around physical activity, the benefits can extend beyond being active itself.

Community activities can create social connections, reduce isolation, help people feel more connected to where they live and improve their health. 

Our 'Social value' research shows that active lifestyles could prevent more than 3.3 million cases of chronic health conditions each year, including depression, back pain and type 2 diabetes, plus delivering an estimated £8 billion in direct net savings to the healthcare system by preventing illness and reducing pressure on the NHS.

That is why our investment in places is about more than sport.

It is about creating the conditions in which being active can become part of everyday life and about ensuring that people have an opportunity to influence what happens in their communities.

We have partnered with NHS Talking Therapies services, City & Hackney Talking Therapies (Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust), LSCFT Talking Therapies (Blackburn with Darwen) and Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust (RDaSH) to explore how physical activity could be embedded into treatment pathways in ways that reflected local needs, communities and strengths.

All sites are part of existing Sport England Place Partnerships with a shared ambition to tackle inequalities in sport and physical activity.

Rather than creating a single national model, each area was given the freedom to develop its own approach.

Tailored to local communities

Every Trailblazer site looks different, because every community is different.

In Hackney, through the Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, the Talking Therapies service supports around 4,500 people each year, the team has integrated physical activity directly into therapeutic support.

Alongside the existing ‘Boost Your Mood’ offer for people receiving lower-intensity support, the service introduced ‘Move Your Mood’, delivered by a physical activity practitioner working as part of the clinical team.

The approach combines psychological support with opportunities to build movement into daily life.

In Blackburn with Darwen, where levels of physical inactivity are higher than the national average, NHS Talking Therapies partnered with the council's Health and Wellbeing Service and social prescribing team to co-deliver a behavioural activation programme.

Movement was integrated throughout the programme, using trusted community settings such as parks, leisure centres and local venues to help participants feel comfortable and supported.

Doncaster developed a model centred around workforce development and sustainable change.

A dedicated physical activity co-ordinator was embedded within the Talking Therapies service at the Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust (RDaSH) to help introduce simple and accessible movement opportunities within group sessions while also building the confidence and skills of practitioners to have meaningful conversations about physical activity with the people they support.

The difference it's making

The evidence from our earlier pilot work suggests that physical activity may improve recovery outcomes and support a more preventative approach to healthcare.

The Trailblazer programme is taking those findings and testing how they can be applied, adapted and sustained in different communities.

Crucially, this is about making physical activity part of recovery and ongoing management, not an optional extra.

For the more than one million people who access NHS Talking Therapies every year, that means creating supported and achievable opportunities to move more, in ways that work for them.

This reflects a core principle of Sport England's Uniting the Movement strategy – that movement and health are fundamentally connected, something that’s appreciated by both patients and staff, which includes 94% of practitioners reporting that physical activity was very important in supporting mental health and wellbeing.

What happens next

The next phase of the Trailblazer programme will focus on strengthening the evidence base.

Over the next two years, we will continue to work alongside local sites, tracking outcomes and learning through a multi-site research programme.

Working with our delivery partner, Transformation Partners in Health and Care (TPHC), and our academic evaluation partner, the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, we will use this learning to inform national best practice and develop resources that can support wider adoption across local NHS Talking Therapies services.

We'll share more as the programme develops.

For now, our thanks go to the teams in Hackney, Blackburn with Darwen and Doncaster, and to all the practitioners, partners and participants helping to turn this ambition into reality.

Because when movement becomes part of mental health support, more people have the opportunity not just to recover, but to thrive.

I can’t wait for the Commonwealth Games, which this year will be held in Glasgow at the end of July, and to the much-needed uplifting news and excitement they’ll bring us.

The games are an opportunity for athletes from across the Commonwealth to compete at the highest level and for people everywhere to enjoy the spectacle, which will extend over 11 days of sport and festivities.

But among all the excitement we can't forget that for some of the athletes, actually getting to the point of competing has been tough and the effects on their training by climate change means it’s only getting tougher.

The dangers of acute weather conditions 

For instance, on the Maldives, sea-level rise is a real problem with saltwater encroaching on facilities and extreme weather stopping play, whereas in India it’s simply too hot to train in the summer, so its athletes must live and train elsewhere if they want to compete.

For those still unsure about the impact of climate change on sport, it’s worth attending a screening of the National Emergency Briefing and having a look at The Well-Adapted UK report, as both documents warn us about the importance of preparing for new temperatures, extreme rainfall and the changing of the seasons.

Sport and physical activity are threatened by a changing climate, not just at elite level but at grassroots level too.

As winters become wetter we are seeing pitches and courts flooded with increasing frequency, leaving them unusable for any training, competition or enjoyment.

Conflict elsewhere is another factor affecting our sector, as it’s leading to wildly fluctuating energy prices that threaten the clubs and sports organisations’ ability to keep the lights and heat on in the facilities, something that particularly affects swimming pools.

And as we approach the summer we'll see how extreme heat is increasingly going to be a key threat, particularly for disabled people, the elderly or those with a long-term health condition.

Plus for those living in densely-populated areas, the lack of shading will deter people from taking exercise as it’s hard for many to be active when the heat makes you ill.

Given that during the Covid pandemic physical activity was one of the few legitimate reasons we were allowed to leave our homes – along with essential shopping, medical needs and travel to work for key workers - it is clear how important exercise is to individuals and to any nation.

That realisation has become an accelerator for action and it’s encouraging that we are starting to work on measures to reduce our impact on the environment, to stop climate change getting any worse, and – just as importantly – to plan for the future.

Here at Sport England we are developing a report, which should be available by late summer, looking at the hazards caused to sport and physical activity by a changing climate.

But while there’s still work that needs to be done, it’s reassuring that people are considering climate change and that we’re are already taking action. 

This is only a first step because we know we need to understand how this will vary across the country, how it’ll affect different activities and – perhaps more importantly – how different people and communities will behave in more extreme weather conditions. 

The King's Baton Relay

I could see this when I visited Malmesbury Bowls Club earlier this month as part of the King’s Baton Relay, which sees delegates of the 74 competing nations and territories travel across their home lands before finishing at the host city of the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow. 

I was there with Sally-Ann Lewis-Wall, representing Team England in para-bowls at the Games, and with TV presenter Radzi Chinyanganya, to hear about the importance of sport at both elite and grassroots level being more sustainable and preparing for the future.

It was great seeing the work done, supported by our Movement Fund, to install an artificial green and then restore it when it was damaged by severe flooding last year.

The bowls club are working with others in the area to take a wider look at the flooding issue.

They have identified tree-planting and other nature-based solutions upstream to slow the flow of water to the town to enable play to continue, meaning that the members of the club will be able to keep enjoying the exercise and the good company. 

It is with thousands of these small actions across England and the Commonwealth that we can ensure we’ll all be able to keep enjoying sport and activity now and into the future.

Every little win against climate change counts and I, for one, will be watching the Games closely and listening out for other inspirational projects.