Richmond upon Thames is most active

4.25.41pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 11th Aug 2006

The Council is celebrating the announcement that Richmond upon Thames has been named the most active borough on mainland England with 31% of borough residents taking regular exercise.

Borough residents are second only to the Isles of Scilly when it comes to regular physical exercise. The result came following a Sport England National Survey that questioned 1,000 residents in each of the 355 boroughs in England.

Commenting on the result Cllr John Coombs, Cabinet Member for Libraries, Sport, Art and Leisure on Richmond Council said:

"At a time when the health of the nation is causing so much concern this is really good news. Richmond upon Thames has a great physical culture tradition ranging from gentle walking in our beautiful parks and along the river to full-blown competitive sports participation.

"I would like to think that our high score in due in part to the investment the Council has recently made in upgrading our own facilities including sports centres, swimming pools, fitness suites and parks. The work carried out by our Sports and Fitness Service in supporting local people and enabling them to become involved in all sorts of healthy activities has also been important.

"But in our borough particular credit must go to the voluntary sector where we have over 180 sports clubs with an estimated 30,000 active members. We must also congratulate our thriving private sector sports and fitness clubs who have an estimated 32,500 members between them.

"We will now work with our partners to build on this. We aim to increase participation by 1% per year for the next 15 years. We want to have the greenest most sustainable borough in the UK. We also want to have the fittest and the healthiest."

Andy Sutch, chair of Sport Richmond added:

"This is a great result for our borough. It is encouraging that so many people are involved as participants and also as volunteers in sport and active recreation and equally important that we have many more who simply take regular exercise.

"We are very lucky in this borough to have great open spaces, parks and playing fields and a variety of other facilities provided by the public, private and voluntary sectors. The local authority, in the form of leisure services has been increasingly supportive in helping with funding, providing expert advice and helping to promote activities aimed to increase club membership and generally increasing participation.

"And whilst programmes like the Council's very successful Competitive Edge initiative, which encourages more sports participation in our schools, are vital if we are to ensure that tomorrow's adults have the correct habits to maintain active healthy lifestyles, we must also ensure that older members of the community, people with disabilities and the disadvantaged have an opportunity to take part ."

Matt Delaney, Director of Sport England London said:

"This is fantastic news for Richmond upon Thames. It is great to see that the people of the borough take physical activity seriously but at 31% our work is not over. Sport England aims to increase participation by 1% per year and we hope that these results will act as catalyst to get even more of the borough's residents taking regular exercise.