Active Lancashire Insight

Satellite Clubs

We work together with a diverse range of community partners across Lancashire, supporting a range of local activity offers that are designed around the needs and motivations of teenagers. Our aim is to provide them with positive, enjoyable experiences that make it easy for them to become active or to develop more regular activity habits.

More Positive Together (MPT) is a Lancashire wide project that aims to help residents of some of the County’s most deprived areas improve their skills and employment prospects. The project is part of the 2014-2020 European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) growth programme in England, and brings together a range of partners such as housing associations, local authorities and third sector organisations to provide practical help and mentoring support to project participants.

The SPAR Lancashire School Games are a unique sporting event designed around the magic of the 2012 Olympics. Coordinated by Active Lancashire and sponsored by James Hall & Co (Spar UK), the games feature a number of Level 1 and Level 2 inter-school competitions throughout the year that all build up to the Level 3 County Multi-Sport Festival which takes place in July at Stanley Park, Blackpool.

Physical activity among the Black, Asian and minority ethnic community (BAME) is lower than other groups; however, our understanding around this diverse population is still limited.

The aim of this research is to get a deeper understanding of the BAME activity levels and understand their barriers to participation, especially for women and those with long term conditions.

We hosted a Partner Conference with the view of bringing together likeminded partners to share learning on key issues within the Sport and Physical Activity sector, whilst also inspiring future work and our upcoming strategy for 2021-25. We were fortunate enough to be joined by a number of engaging keynote speakers such as Steve Fogg, Chair of the Lancashire Economic Partnership (LEP) and Managing Director of BAE Systems, Sakthi Karunanithi, Direction of Population Healthcare at Lancashire County Council and Justine Blomeley from Sport England.

We were the first people in Lancashire to see the LEP's new strategy which, for the first time ever, features a specific mention of 'Health' as a key priority.

The presentations from the day can be found here:

The United Together Pre-release programme is a new initiative to provide an essential link to the wider United Together programme in the community.

The aim is to provide a joined-up approach which engages those near to release whilst still in prison and then supports them immediately from release to help them overcome key barriers they face and to reduce the likelihood of them re-offending.

On release, participants are met by our Challenge Through Sport Initiative ( Support Workers with lived experience, who develop personal action plans with each individual and then link them into support from a whole range of support in the community including our Football Trusts.

This is a research report that includes a partnership collaboration study between Manchester Metropolitan University and five Active Partnerships (AP) in the north of England. The project reviews existing information and literature on COVID-19 around the motivational changes, behaviours and societal challenges facing the sport and physical activity sector. 

It takes a ‘deep dive’ into the hidden voices and experiences of organisations and individuals within communities that are specifically low socio-economic status and aim to tease out nuances across, gender, age, ethnicity/faith and social class.

Produced by: Dr Chris Mackintosh, Dr Ben Ives, Dr Leanne Staniford, Dr Laura Gale, Anne Thompson, Dr Dave Sims, Dr John Daniels, Dr Sam Oldfield, Dr Petra Kolic.

In partnership with Active Cheshire, Active Lancashire, Greater Sport, MSP and Yorkshire Sport Foundation. 

In July 2019 the DfE, DCMS and DHSC published the School Sport and Activity Action Plan (the Action Plan). This Action Plan was a joint commitment to ongoing collaboration at national level to ensure that sport and physical activity are an integral part of both the school day and after-school activities. Opening School Facilities phase 2 programme supports this commitment and Active Lancashire are responsible for the delivery of this programme across Lancashire.

Active Lancashire’s role is to provide support and investment to schools to help deliver after school provision to help young people reconnect, recover and return to play. Particularly focusing on those schools with a high percentage of pupils on FSM, pupil premium or in areas of deprivation where locally activity levels amongst children and young people are typically low. We will also look to support schools to help open or reopen their facilities to the local community, as local evidence suggests that schools are community hubs where people feel safe.

Overview of Phase 2 Investment

Please see the report below. This report showcases where investment has gone across the county, our priorities for the support and investment allocated, and some initial reporting in terms of the impact made. This is the initial evaluation of the programme. Our second phase of reporting will contain reporting from schools and the direct impact the support has made. We aim to have this before Christmas 2021. You can learn more about the first phase of Opening school Facilities both locally and nationally here

Opening School Facilities phase 2 Evaluation

As part of our phase 2 work, we commissioned Emma Slater of PS Research to evaluate the investment we allocated to schools focusing on enhancing their after school provision, and helping young people recover from the pandemic and numerous lockdowns. This was one of the priority areas for phase 2 and where the majority of our investment was allocated, with over £166K going to 41 schools.