£200,000 of Tackling Inequalities funding helps partners support communities hardest hit by pandemic

To date, London Sport has distributed almost £200,000 of Sport England's Tackling Inequalities Funding to 20 organisations across the capital; Specialist Advisor Physical Activity for Health Barry Kelly explains more. 

At London Sport we've been utilising the Sport England Tackling Inequalities Fund to work with a range of new partners to address the challenges faced by communities either becoming or staying active during the past number of months.

This has focused on a number of groups: lower socio-economic groups; ethnically diverse communities; disabled people; and people with long-term health conditions.

In the first phase, £199,611 has funded a range of projects including: dance classes over Zoom; sensory walks; gardening and cycling.

We've also worked with an NHS mental health trust to develop a comprehensive physical activity offer for patients and supported a number of different projects focusing on children and young people providing opportunities to get active at home or outdoors.

Over the next few weeks and months we'll be telling the stories of these projects on our Tackling Inequalities Fund webpage so please watch out for them.

Meanwhile, we will continue to do our upmost to work with local organisations to try and get Tackling Inequalities Fund resources to where they are needed most.

And they are very much needed.

We are now nearly a year on from the start of the covid-19 pandemic in the UK.

The last 12 months have proven to be very hard for many people and it will probably take some time to understand full extent of the impact this period will have on our health and wellbeing.

I’m also sure there are things that we may have chosen to have done differently if we had known this period would have lasted for so long.

As we look to the future, and our recovery from covid-19, we are nevertheless beginning to understand more about what has happened to us over the last year.

It has become increasingly evident that the covid-19 pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated the stark inequalities present in our society.

One only has to read Build Back Fairer: The covid-19 Marmot Review to realise the systemic nature of these inequalities and the impact this pandemic has had.

Physical activity is no different and there are groups already disproportionately impacted by inequalities which have been made worse.

Sport England has spent the last year monitoring and reporting on many of these issues on a regular basis but yet more evidence continues to emerge.

Last week, a study on children in Bradford found that only a third had taken sufficient exercise in the first lockdown.

All of which points to the importance of how we deal with this recovery, acknowledging that it will take some time.

In London, a Recovery Board has been established and led by the Mayor. 

Their work has identified nine recovery mission areas that will be critical to the recovery of the capital and a big part of this is how we go about narrowing social and economic inequalities.

The covid-19 recovery will take some time, effort and resources and London Sport will continue to use the Tackling Inequalities Fund as the first step in that recovery.