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Place Partnerships Work

Active Norfolk/About Us/Our Locality Way of Working/Place Partnerships Work

What Are Place Partnerships?

Place Partnerships are a key initiative by Sport England to foster local change and encourage physical activity. These partnerships are part of the broader Uniting the Movement strategy, which focuses on addressing inactivity and the inequalities that contribute to it.

In 2017, Sport England launched 12 Local Delivery Pilots (LDPs) to collaborate with communities and organisations in areas of greatest need. This place-based approach aimed to tackle inactivity and related inequalities by identifying barriers and developing local solutions together. Listen to the 6-episode podcast series featuring 18 place partners sharing their experiences.

Funding in Norfolk: What areas will benefit?

Active Norfolk led a two-part development award application to Sport England, co-produced with local partners. The first phase funded a project coordinator and an insight and evaluation officer. 

Additional funding, secured in October 2024, will help us understand local priorities by reviewing data, consulting stakeholders, exploring assets, and engaging with communities to identify knowledge gaps.

We will then deliver and evaluate initiatives to inform our 2025 full award submission. 

Place Universal Offer

This year Sport England will launch the Place Universal Offer across England, ensuring everyone has the opportunity to be physically active.

While certain areas have been prioritised for greater support and investment based on need, this initiative aims to extend support universally.

Evaluation of Place Partnerships work

The National Evaluation and Learning Partnership (NELP) supports learning and evaluation of whole systems and place-based approaches. NELP has identified 10 key features necessary for addressing inequalities in place partnerships. To learn more, watch NELP’s video series detailing each condition and its key components.

How will the funding be used?

Sport England have announced 53 places they will be expanding their Place Partnership work into, in order to address regional inequalities in inactivity levels across England. These will join the 12 existing Place Partnerships (formerly Local Delivery Pilots) established in 2017.

Amongst these are King’s Lynn & West Norfolk, and Great Yarmouth; both of which have been identified as being in the top 10% of the country for inactivity, social need, deprivation and health inequality at a national level.

We know that the investment needs to target areas where there are barriers to participation, be it financial, accessibility, or lack of facilities, especially for underrepresented groups.

For this, we need to successfully work with local partners and communities to identify and tackle these barriers head on. We will also focus on influencing decision making and change, ensuring people can walk, cycle, or take part in recreational activities safely and easily.

To find out more about our Place-based work, please check out our Active Communities page.

Active Communities: More about Place-Based work

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