Council praised for highest physical activity rates in the country

Brighton and Hove had the highest adult activity rate in England in Sport England's recent Active Lives survey.

At the Active Sussex Conference on Tuesday (September 24), representatives from the council’s healthy lifestyles team, transport planning, sports facilities, youth and School Games spoke about the work they have been doing across the city to encourage residents to move more as part of their Let’s Get Moving strategy.

Verena Quin, Brighton & Hove City Council’s Healthy Lifestyles Manager, said: “It has been a real shift for us over the last few years.

“We always encourage people to be physically active, and we drive the guidelines, but we have definitely changed our language more recently to talk about how bad inactivity is for us and, for us, our new strategy is indicative of that.

“We encourage people to think about every minute counting and making physical activity everyone’s business.”

She added: “We are lucky in Brighton and Hove to have an unwavering political commitment to the physical activity agenda.”

The second session of the conference, held at the American Express Stadium in Brighton, examined the importance of listening to lived experience.

Bexhill resident Joanna Wood is visually impaired, battled with chronic illness, and is now a carer for her mum.

Before she became unwell, she rowed in the Boat Race for the University of Cambridge and regularly ran and climbed.

She shared some of her barriers to being active and how we can better support people like her in accessing sports and activities.

She said: “It is important to see the barriers so we can do something about them.

“Being active is monumentally hard for me and for people who share these barriers, but we are not giving up.

“I made a promise to myself when I was 19 that I would see how far I can take sport and I still plan to, so I am launching my competitive sporting career at 39.

“You should not give up either, no matter how insurmountable the barriers facing your communities.

“Everyone has the right to be active, everyone has the right to find their active and everyone has the right to thrive as active.”

Amanda Silva from Diversity Resource International, based in Lewes, spoke about their work to engage underserved, ethnically diverse communities to move more.

She discussed how organisations should collaborate with organisations already embedded in the communities they are trying to engage with.

“I think the biggest challenge of all is the time it takes to build relationships and connections and to build the trust with these communities,” she said.

“We would like to encourage you to build relationships, especially to engage in partnerships with community organisations that have built trust and relationships with the communities already, and they can provide a bridge for your organisation to the communities you would like to reach and engage with.

“Listening to the communities will then allow you to tailor your activities to their needs and challenges because you will be engaging directly with them.

“That will bring you success because it will be a really targeted activity with really targeted actions to break down the barriers that these people are facing and that you did not know about.”

The conference's final session examined how the sport and physical activity sector can become more diverse, inclusive, and socially responsible to tackle inequalities.

Anthony Statham, interim CEO at Active Sussex, said : “It was fantastic to see so many partners supporting another sell-out Active Sussex Conference.

“The conference brought to life key components of the Getting Sussex Moving Strategy by highlighting whole-system working, understanding lived experiences, and being an inclusive sector as cornerstones for enabling people to be physically active and move more.

“The energy for collaborative working was evident for all those in attendance. We now need to channel this energy into creating meaningful, sustainable change across our networks and systems, and I've every confidence that together we can create the conditions to support Getting Sussex Moving.”

To learn more about Active Sussex and its work across Sussex in Getting Sussex Moving, read the Active Sussex Impact Report 2023-24 here.