The Black Country is moving in the right direction to getting more people active

The Active Lives Survey measures the activity levels of people across England.

The new survey data for May 2018/19 released yesterday shows that 32.5% of Black Country residents are inactive, a decrease of 0.3pp since May 2017/18.

This follows the trend with the rest of the country – across England 24.8% of adults are now classed as inactive, this is a decrease of 0.4pp. 54.6% of Black Country adults are classed as physically active – this rate has remained consistent since May 2017/18.

This is a considerably lower percentage than the national rate whereby 63.2% of people are now categorised as Active, an increase of 0.9pp since May 2017/18.

In order to reach the national average rate of inactive people, 72,231 more people are required to do some physical activity in the Black Country. With 80,659 more people required to be sufficiently active in order to reach the national rate of active people.

Across the Black Country, there has been a decrease in activity in Sandwell and Wolverhampton, however there has been large increases in activity in Dudley and Walsall.

Activity includes activities such as walking, cycling, dance, fitness and sporting activities.

Michael Salmon, Head of Insight, Health and Wellbeing for Active Black Country said:

The data released yesterday is good news. It demonstrates both that we’re moving in the right direction but that there’s still a lot of ground to make up. For the Black Country to be on a par with the rest of the country it would need an additional 72,231 residents being active at moderate intensity for at least 30 weekly minutes. We’ll be piloting a number of projects over the next two years that will look to get under the skin of the root causes for inactivity in some of our most deprived areas in a bid to close this gap even further.”

Active Black Country is one of 43 Active Partnerships in England working to provide opportunities for people to participate in sport and physical activity across the Black Country.

For further information contact Michael Salmon on Michael_salmon@blackcountryconsortium.co.uk

ENDS