Image: Stalker gave his keynote speech in Birmingham

David Stalker, chief executive of the Fitness Industry Association (FIA) has called for the entire active leisure sector to play its part to ensure a successful legacy from the 2012 "summer of sport".

In a keynote speech given yesterday (19 September) at Leisure Industry Week in Birmingham, Stalker said the aim of all legacy plans should be to make the UK the "most active nation in the world".

To achieve this aim, he said the industry needs to work together through partnerships, bringing together strategies which together can have a greater impact than the sum of their component parts.

"This is not the FIA's legacy to deliver but the sectors'," Stalker said. "The FIA is the facilitator, creating partnerships and pathways to help deliver more people, more active, more often.

"To all businesses in our sector, I say that if you don't have a legacy strategy, in a few years we will have missed the biggest opportunity, and it will all come tumbling down.

"We will lose the chance to be seen by the government as the people who can make a difference - there is lots that we can do but we need the whole sector to get behind it. Together we can achieve more."

Stalker also encouraged more operators to sign up for the FIA's legacy project, spogo - an online national sport and fitness finder.

The service has been created in partnership with Sport England and targets the 80 per cent of the population that is currently inactive.

Stalker said: "Spogo is a vital part of our sector thriving on a digital economy. It is for anybody who is able to deliver a difference to people's activity levels - we are giving them that pathway to make a difference.

"We're very proud of where it is going and we need your continued involvement and feedback."

He also highlighted the importance of the role played by the FIA Research Institute - particularly in convincing the government that the active leisure sector can become an important part of a preventative healthcare system.

He described the institute's nationwide UK Fitness Centre Health and Wellbeing Investigation as a significant step towards gaining credibility in the corridors of power.

"The government will not pass any of the £2bn health budget to us unless we provide hard evidence that what we do - and how we do it - works to improve people's health," he said.

"The pilot statistics were game changing and the nationwide study will provide evidence that could save the health service millions of pounds through reducing cardio risk factors."

"We are the biggest delivery industry and key to the legacy. Let's do it together and make those Olympians as proud of us as we are of them."

* The annual Leisure Industry Week exhibition is taking place at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham this week. For more information and to register, click here.