23,100 more young people active in Greater Manchester than 12 months ago

More young people are becoming active in Greater Manchester than 12 months ago, according to recent research released by Sport England.

There are now 176,700 children and young people who are active for at least 60 minutes a day in Greater Manchester (equating to 45.2%), is a significant increase of 5.3% from the survey 12 months ago.

The trend is positive and more young people are moving more, however, Greater Manchester is still below the national average of 46.8%.

This means that 214,700 children are not meeting the recommended guidelines of 60 minutes a day.

When the number of adults moving in Greater Manchester is added to this, it totals 1.9 million residents moving, just under GreaterSport’s target of 2 million people moving by 2021, and 70.2% of the local population moving.

Sara Tomkins, CEO at GreaterSport said: “It is pleasing to see 23,100 more young people are moving more and therefore experiencing the physical, mental and social benefits that comes from activity.

“Seeing that over half of young people (55%) are not meeting the guidelines means we have more to do to enable every child in Greater Manchester the opportunity to be active and find something they enjoy doing, which will have a knock-on effect on their overall health and wellbeing.”

Government guidelines recommend that children and young people should get 30 minutes of their daily physical activity in the school day and 30 minutes outside of school.

In Greater Manchester, figures show that there has been a rise in children moving more outside of school over the last year, with 56.6% (up by 7.3%) doing an average of 30 minutes or more a day outside of school, compared to 38.9% at school.

Responding to Sport England’s ‘Active Lives Children and Young People' report, a spokesperson for the Local Government Authority, said: “These figures show that efforts by councils and Sport England to get children and young people active are working.

“Council-led initiatives, such as exercise referral schemes and offering free or reduced-cost to play sport, create more active opportunities for young people.

“Alongside other partners, councils have also made good progress in improving children’s health, from health visitors supporting new parents to weight management services.

“However, more needs to be done to reduce the gap between the most and least deprived.

“Councils need to invest in their facilities and services to help keep the next generation healthy.

“Today’s obese children will become tomorrow’s obese adults, whose years of healthy life will be shortened by a whole host of health problems including diabetes, cancer and heart disease.”