Place Universal Offer
Supporting movement & tackling inequalities in Gloucestershire where it is needed most
We’re working with local communities in Gloucestershire to make it easier for people to move more in their daily lives.
Where someone lives, and the environment around them, can have a big impact on how active they are. National research shows that people living in areas of high deprivation often have fewer opportunities to be physically active.
We will be taking a place-based approach, working with local people and partners to understand what helps and what gets in the way of being active. By doing so, we can co-create long-term change with the people who know their communities best.
Gloucestershire has been awarded part of a £25 million investment from Sport England through the Place Universal Offer. This funding aims to tackle inactivity and inequality in the most deprived areas across the country.
The Place Universal Offer builds on the learning from Sport England’s Local Delivery Pilot areas across the country, designed in a way to better support local people and places to become more active, healthier, and better connected.
What we’re doing
- Listening to local voices, to understand reasons for inactivity
- Connecting people to opportunities to move more
- Working with cross-sector stakeholders in health, local government, VCSE, and more to understand and address systemic barriers
- Supporting the workforce to develop their skills, knowledge and capacity to work in a place-based, whole system way to tackle inequalities and root causes to inactivity, aiming to decrease the inactivity gap in communities across the county.
Our Priority Places
Our approach is support, being scaled and proportionate to the level of local need and disadvantage.
Our three priority areas are Cinderford (Forest of Dean) and Podsmead (Gloucester), where we know people face some of the biggest barriers to being active.
An introduction to place based working
Over the past six years, Sport England have tested this place-based approach in places across the country with some of the most disadvantaged and least active communities. They have invested time evaluating the approach and surfacing the learning to better understand the skills, mindsets, behaviours and capacity required to enable successful place-based, systemic working.
This 4-minute film from Sport England shares the ethos and learning behind creating change in places.
Cinderford
In November 2023, the Active Gloucestershire place team embarked upon an exciting journey to work within a new area of the county – Cinderford. Our goals were to encourage collaboration across organisations, better understand the barriers and enablers to physical activity within the town and start to establish the conditions for physical activity to take place.
Gloucester
Since 2018, we have worked to build capacity in priority wards in the city for communities to activate themselves. From cycling projects for woman, community chest grant schemes, community building, Beat the Street and investing in community led health and wellbeing roles. Over the last year, we have been working in Matson to support the communities wellbeing.
Podcast: Place based working
Listen to our podcast all about the place based work we are doing in Gloucestershire.
Funding
Looking for funding for your project? Take a look at our funding page for more information.
In your area
Want to know what’s going on in your area? Take a look at our map and select the place where you live to find out what we are doing in your area.
