Our story so far

April 2018 - Let’s Move Lincolnshire is launched.

Partners from right across Lincolnshire commit to working together as one team to tackle the challenge of physical inactivity in our county.

Recognising the scale and impact of physical inactivity in Lincolnshire, a group of public, private, community and voluntary sector partners came together to explore and tackle the problem.

With a shared understanding of the importance of being active, and a common ambition of a healthier, more active county, they created Let’s Move Lincolnshire and its accompanying Let’s Move Blueprint. The blueprint formed the physical activity strand of Lincolnshire’s joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy, and their vision for its impact was to increase opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to be more physically active every day.

Together, they committed to a new way of working – a whole-system approach that would enable our communities to move more. It was a step change in cross-county collaboration, making Lincolnshire one of the first counties in the UK to commit to working across the system to enable more people to be more active, more often.

June 2018 - Lincolnshire’s second joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy goes live.

Recognising the risks inactivity brings, the strategy seeks to tackle the problem through strategic planning, development, services and support, improving health outcomes in our communities.

The county’s second joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy identified physical activity as a priority. It recognised inactivity as the fourth greatest risk factor for premature death – responsible for one in six UK deaths, and having a bigger impact than obesity.

The strategy stated that taking the recommended amount of physical activity could cut the risk of Type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, falls and hypertension by at least 30%. It also said that being active could reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, osteoarthritis, hip fractures and depression by 20-80%.

With physical activity having such clear potential to improve people’s health, the strategy set a number of key objectives. They included integrating physical activity into pathways and strategic planning, undertaking robust local insight analysis, using that insight to drive developments and service improvements, supporting workforce wellbeing, exploring innovation and technology, and embedding safeguarding in physical activity across the county.

March 2019 - The Lincolnshire Physical Activity Taskforce gets to work.

Stakeholders from across the county join the taskforce to deliver the ambitious change outlined in the Let’s Move Blueprint and Let’s Move Lincolnshire strategy.

The taskforce united a whole range of partners, working in earnest and putting competition aside to jointly promote activity county-wide. It was about building on strong foundations, championing innovation and bringing together organisations with the influence to broker change.

By challenging established ways of working and collaborating more closely than ever, the taskforce set out to help more people in Lincolnshire lead an active life, prioritising the key interventions that would have the most impact on physical and mental health.

March 2019 - Think Active partnership promotes positive mental health.

Active Lincolnshire and the Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust launch a conference and pilot schemes focused on the link between physical activity and mental wellbeing.

The Think Active conference was jointly hosted by Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT) and Active Lincolnshire, with the aim of promoting physical activity as a way of improving mental health and wellbeing. It showcased good practice around mental health and staff development for LPFT employees, as well as third sector and community providers.

Building on this work, Active Lincolnshire facilitated new Think Active funded groups, piloting ways to engage and support people with mental health issues through activity.

April 2019 - Physical activity behaviour mapped across the county.

Recognising the differences in activity levels across Lincolnshire, insights are produced for each district, creating an in-depth local picture to inform effective, bespoke strategies.

Active Lincolnshire provided detailed insight into physical activity levels for each of the county’s district authorities, using the national Active Lives survey data. These insights have been used to help inform local policy as well as strategies to promote health, wellbeing and physical activity.

View the latest district insight

July 2019 -Healthy lifestyle service comes to Lincolnshire.

Public Health Lincolnshire invests in a new healthy lifestyle service to give free professional support to people who need it most.

In summer 2019, Public Health Lincolnshire introduced One You Lincolnshire, an integrated healthy lifestyle service designed to help people move more, drink less alcohol, stop smoking, eat well and lose weight. Offering free professional support, it targeted the people and communities most in need across the county.

August 2019 - One Network goes live, focusing on children and young people.

A collaboration between not-for-profit organisations, the network launches with one shared mission: to help every child in Lincolnshire lead an active life.

One Network was established by stakeholders from a range of organisations influencing the provision of activity for children, including Children’s Links, Lincolnshire County Council, Inspire Plus, the Youth Sport Trust and School Games organisers.

Together, they advocated to increase the quality and quantity of opportunities for children and young people to be physically active in play, education and community settings.

December 2019 - County-wide collaboration helps new mums get active.

The partnership focuses on supporting Lincolnshire mums before and after they give birth, with initial work used to scale and transfer the project to reach even more people.

Active Lincolnshire collaborated with One You Lincolnshire’s Health in Pregnancy team, Better Births Lincolnshire, United Lincolnshire Hospital Trust and Lincolnshire County Council to help equip healthcare professionals, practitioners and physical activity providers with consistent messaging for new and expectant mums.

This messaging focused on encouraging them to be – and remain – as active as possible, and included connecting them to relevant opportunities and local support groups.

Find out more about the pre and post-natal programme of work.

January 2020 - Lincoln Eastern Bypass includes 6 miles of cycle and footpaths.

Capital investment aims to ease congestion on the county’s roads and create safe, accessible routes for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders.

Plans and funding for the new Lincoln Eastern Bypass were confirmed, and as well as easing congestion for cars and lorries, they included a 3m-wide shared cycle and footpath along the entire bypass route. The route incorporated safe underpasses, bridges and crossing points, providing accessible links across the area for people on foot, cycling or riding horses.

March 2020 - County’s sport, leisure and activity sector rises to the challenge of Covid.

The pandemic impacts leisure and physical activity services, changes people’s behaviour and widens inequalities – demanding new ways of thinking, working and supporting our communities.

Disrupting lives across the county, the country and the world, the pandemic put health and wellbeing front of mind. Life changed for everybody, but people facing inequalities often felt the impact more acutely, and mental health issues, loneliness and isolation increased.

With the UK on lockdown, most people were only allowed outside for an hour a day – and using that hour for exercise was widely encouraged. Despite a hugely positive rise in people walking and cycling during those windows, many leisure facilities reliant on membership fees were forced to close, and the sport, leisure and physical activity sector was one of the hardest hit.

With guidance from Sport England – and listening closely to local needs – Active Lincolnshire responded immediately to the changing needs of the community. The Tackling Inequalities fund enabled us to support community and voluntary groups, sports clubs and activity providers, helping them respond and enabling people to keep accessing services – and keep active.

During the course of the pandemic, digital content increased and a new way of being active at home became mainstream. There was also a positive increase in levels of activity among teenage girls. Overall, it became evident that if people are given time and permission to be active, they do.

April 2020 - The Centre for Ageing Better is launched.

Responding to the challenges and opportunities created by our county’s ageing population, the centre launched a strategic partnership with a vision – to help everybody enjoy a good later life.

With 43% of Lincolnshire’s population aged over 50, there was a need for specific support to help older residents live better, for longer. East Lindsay District Council, Lincolnshire County Council and the CAB (Centre for Ageing Better) established a strategic five-year partnership to add value, accelerate existing plans, and give the county the opportunity to engage and influence national policy and funding streams.

One of the centre’s key focuses is to help older people live healthier, more active lives, reducing the risk of poor health, as well as delaying the onset, progression and impact of disease and disability. Part of that involves making sure people live in safe, accessible, adaptable homes, where they can remain active for longer.

The centre also aims to improve quality of life by helping people stay in good quality work, boosting their savings and delaying the point at which they become dependent on their pensions. It also works to make sure people live in communities where social relationships flourish, making it easier to build and maintain close connections, as well as wider everyday contact.

May 2020 - Tackling Inequalities fund gets to work supporting people in need.

Sport England launches the new fund, giving grants to community and voluntary projects which support the people most negatively impacted by Covid – and help them to be active.

Since May 2020, Active Lincolnshire has distributed £240,000 in Tacking Inequalities grants (now called the Together Fund). These have helped 58 community and voluntary projects support people in need, providing a wide range of activities, from seated dance classes to sensory swimming, archery and culture trails.

December 2020 - North East partnership aims to turn the tide on inactive coastal communities.

With inactivity levels significantly higher in coastal communities, the North East Coastal Active Partnership launches its Turning the Tide report on tackling inequality.

Active Lincolnshire is one of five active partnerships that make up the North East Coastal Active Partnership. Together, they work to tackle the many health inequalities in coastal communities, fast-tracking learnings, sharing best practice and creating opportunities to innovate.

In December 2020, the partnership released their Turning the Tide on Physical Inactivity report. While it was fundamentally about addressing physical activity, the report recognised that activity levels were just one of many areas where the region’s coastal communities scored poorly.

It stated that by tackling these underlying low levels of physical activity, the partnership was working to make sure these communities saw longer-term improvements across a whole range of other health and wellbeing indices.

January 2021 - The national Uniting the Movement strategy goes live.

The strategy’s a commitment to transforming lives and communities through sport and physical activity, recognising that achieving this ambition calls for a true movement of partners.

Uniting the Movement was created in the wake of Covid, as the UK adapted and rebuilt from the huge disruption the pandemic caused. A 10-year strategy, it collectively reimagined how we keep movement, sport and activity central to everyone’s daily lives, harnessing their power to improve people’s health and prosperity in so many ways.

At the heart of the strategy was the belief that sport and physical activity have a big role to play in improving the physical and mental health of the nation, supporting the economy, reconnecting communities and building a stronger society for all.

It also stated that for too long, people with the most to gain from being active have been the least able to take part – and that with the pandemic highlighting and exacerbating inequalities, it was more pressing than ever that action was taken and different approaches adopted.

The strategy set out how we need to change as a sector and an ecosystem, if we’re going to give people what they need, both in the short and longer term. More than anything, it set out to tackle the inequalities we’ve long seen in sport and activity, helping remove barriers to activity, and providing opportunities to people and communities that have traditionally been left behind.

Active Lincolnshire commissions interpretation of Active Lives data, helping partners, policy makers and statutory bodies make appropriate decisions, based on local insight and evidence.

Working in partnership with Press Red, Active Lincolnshire transformed the data from the Active Lives survey into an actionable insight pack, which played a key part in planning the provision of physical activity, and getting funding directly to the areas that needed it most.

Using Active Lives data along with other sources, they also created an interactive mapping tool, giving users the opportunity to compare Lincolnshire’s activity levels with other areas, and see how active the county is on a national scale.

April 2021 - Pilot scheme aims to embed physical activity in the health and care system.

Collaboration between Active Lincolnshire, Active Dorset, Sport England and local health and care providers looks for the most effective way to make activity an intrinsic part of the system.

Active Lincolnshire was selected to take part in a Sport England pilot, along with Active Dorset, working with health partners to embed physical activity across the health and care system.

The scheme recognises the scale of change that can be achieved by working at all layers of the system, making sure physical activity interventions are available and the communication, training and education are in place so patients can easily access them.

January 2022 - Active Lincolnshire website and activity finder go live.

Funded by Public Health Lincolnshire, together they provide a one-stop-shop promoting all the opportunities to be active across our county, reaching more people with relevant content.

Let’s Move Lincolnshire’s digital platform was launched to provide dedicated content that promoted and showcased opportunities to be active throughout the county. A resident-facing platform, it brings together a whole range of information and resources that would otherwise often be disparate and hard to find.

A wide range of access points are needed if we’re to reach a cross-section of the Lincolnshire community. So, the website also enables content to also be shared via a widget with other stakeholders, who can help to engage and involve even more residents.

April 2022 - Active Lincolnshire secures 5 years of funding from Sport England.

The five-year commitment recognises that systemic change requires long-term collaboration and a funded core team to lead, influence and advocate for physical activity.

April 2022 saw the start of a five-year Sport England funding commitment, enabling Active Lincolnshire to embed Uniting the Movement and tackle inequalities in Lincolnshire according to local need. Active partnerships like ours are funded to play a system role – one of influence, advocacy, support and coordination across the sport and physical activity sector. This crucial new chapter of work is being delivered through Let’s Move Lincolnshire.

June 2022 - Let’s Move Lincolnshire launches revitalised strategy.

Recognising the impact of Covid, responding to Uniting the Movement and drawing on a deeper understanding of local needs, the updated strategy sets out a clear action plan for the next 10 years.

The refreshed strategy and action plans draw directly from the learnings we gained through a collaborative consultation with the University of Lincoln. This extensive piece of work included over 400 conversations and surveys with citizens and stakeholders to understand the landscape, barriers and conditions behind the county’s current physical inactivity challenges.