Let's Move!

Supporting Communities to be Active - Place-based work in Cumbria

Let's Move! is Cumbria's programme to deliver Sport England's Place Expansion and Place Universal offer - part of a major national effort to reduce inactivity in areas facing high social and health inequality.  

Place-based working is Sport England’s approach to tackling inactivity and health inequality by focusing on specific local areas, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all national model. It means: 

  • Working with communities to understand their unique challenges and assets.
  • Building local partnerships across councils, health, education, housing, and voluntary sectors.
  • Co-designing solutions that reflect local culture, geography, and needs.

Why a Place-based approach?

  • Inactivity is uneven - People in deprived areas are twice as likely to be inactive. 
  • Health inequalities - These areas often face higher rates of chronic illness and lower life expectancy. 
  • Local insight matters - National programmes can miss local barriers like cost, transport, or cultural factors. Place-based working ensures interventions are tailored and sustainable. 

Let's Move! has four key aims: -

  • Increasing activity, so that more people feel the benefit of being active on a regular basis.
  • Decreasing inactivity, helping more people to start and maintain a relationship with activity.
  • Tackling inequality, removing the barriers that prevent people from being active.
  • Providing positive experiences for children and young people, so that lifelong activity habits can be formed.

Let’s Move! – Guiding Principles 

Let’s Move! has an established a set of Guiding Principles, these being: -  

  • Do our plans help people become active?    
  • Have we involved local people in gaining insight and finding solutions?    
  • Have we considered the diversity of the local community?    
  • Do we understand what needs to be different to make a difference?    
  • Are we being bold and trying new things?    
  • Are we building capacity and strengthening delivery through collaboration and partnerships?    
  • Does this support a whole system approach?    
  • Are we building sustainability into our design and planning?    
  • Does this support a test, learn and share approach?    

Let's Move! Cumberland

Let's Move! Westmorland and Furness