Don’t wait for the government, or the NHS, to provide the solutions or the budget, just get on with it was a key takeaway from this year's Active Uprising conference.

The annual conference from trade body, UK Active, took place in London’s Queen Elizabeth II Centre on Thursday 6 March, welcoming health and business leaders. Talks and panel discussions included the sector’s potential to drive economic growth, careers, Gen Z, forming partnerships with the NHS and loyalty schemes.

As people continue to prioritise their spend on wellness, there was an optimistic tone. However, as the government faces a challenging economic situation and the NHS is facing serious challenges, many speakers called on the sector to be the solution, rather than wait for the NHS or the government to provide the lead.

The message was that partnerships made on a local level; being creative about setting up projects and then evaluating them and communicating their success are the key to making the breakthroughs the industry wants when it comes to partnering with the NHS and unlocking economic growth.

The NHS has no money

Speaking as part of a panel discussion on strengthening links with the NHS, William Roberts, CEO of Royal Society of Public Health, said it like it is: “There is no money and no social prescribing budget – the NHS is overspent by £3.9 billion at the moment. There are never any savings even if waiting lists get reduced.”

Strategic advisor to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Paul Corrigan, who was interviewed by outgoing UK Active chair, Mike Farrar, said the same: “Social prescribing can keep someone from getting more ill, but how do you turn that into cash?”

Corrigan explained that a major hurdle to overcome is the financial model of the NHS, where GPs operate as small businesses and hospitals are their own separate entities. So while an intervention from a GP might keep someone out of hospital, it doesn’t generate any income for the GP to reinvest.

“The saving doesn’t come back to the cost,” he said.

Corrigan also warned of an approaching wave of doom: “The ageing population will grow considerably in the next 10 years. If we keep doing the same the NHS will collapse, it might already be collapsing. It needs some radical changes or we’ll be in big trouble.

“There is the aspiration to move out of firefighter mode, but we can’t do it alone. It’s not a vision which can just be delivered in Whitehall, the answer lies in every locality.”

When asked whether the sector should be flagging up the value it delivers to the economy via employment, he raised eyebrows with his statement that people working in the sector don't think of it as being a 'proper' job, saying, "Your industry attracts a whole bunch of people into jobs because they're interested in the process in their leisure time.

"They don't think about it as a job, they see it as an activity."

Many delegates were left feeling that there is work to do explaining the high levels of expertise that exist in the sector to the various branches of government and its agencies.

The government gets too many reports

UK Active board member and UK competitiveness director at CBI, Jordan Cummins, told delegates that the government gets numerous reports from multiple industries claiming they can unlock savings, so a fresh approach is needed in order for the sector to be heard.

“The industry needs to get MPs as excited about treadmills as they are about hard hats,” he said. “Treat health like we’ve been treating climate change: set a framework for measuring change – such as health expectancy or working years – and focus on two or three things which are doable in this parliamentary term to make a change. Whittle the priorities down and simplify the message.”

Cummins said that while some sectors struggle with the pitch, fitness offers tangible results and the sector has the advantage of being able to talk to numerous government departments.

Evidence and evaluation

We kept hearing that evidence is crucial. Priya Oomhadat, deputy director of rehabilitation NHS England, raised this point, as did Adam Memon, director of strategy NHS England. “Quality of evaluation is important. We want more and better data, as well as examples of innovative models of care, such as how we can re-do physiotherapy,” he said.

“We want to hear about projects that have a health and economic outcome; which have been evaluated and tested. We’re also interested in projects where there is robust data but it has not yet been operationalised.”

It’s advisable to start evaluation early, because many academic institutions have a very slow turnaround, he said.

Generation Anxious

“Life is pretty crap for young people. There is less joy than for previous generations,” said Laura-Jane Rawlings, CEO of Youth Employment UK who was part of the No Growth without Health panel discussion. “This generation have grown up with the pandemic, which caused deep isolation, and calls to Childline went through the roof because so many weren’t safe at home.”

In the last three years there has been a 42 per cent increase in NEETS (young people not in education, employment or training) which was up to 987,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024. Rawlings said the fitness industry can help by being a good employer: “It needs to be done without government. Think outside of the policy box and create belonging.”

She called on employers to offer roles for 15-year-olds so they can learn the important employability skills and to accept the fact that times have changed – people might only stay for 18 months to two years, and that’s okay.

In a panel discussion on Generation Z – a generation of anxious people – Hayley Jarvis, head of physical activity at Mind, the UK's National Association for Mental Health, reiterated the difficulties facing young people. In 2017 one in nine were struggling with their mental health and by 2023 it was one in five. This mental health epidemic is disproportionately impacting girls and only one third are getting help.

An alarming statistic is that 82 per cent are worried about what’s going on in the world. “According to Mind insights, many young people know that physical activity can help, but they don’t feel it will solve the underlying issue or issues causing them anxiety,” said Jarvis. “It’s important to make the gym environment safe, familiar and easy to access.”

McDonald’s was praised

Rawlings said that as an employer, McDonald’s is good because it doesn’t expect its employees to stay for more than two years, but is happy to invest in them and feels that once they leave they are still making a wider contribution to the economy and society.

Adam Wilson, quantitative insight director at Beano Brain, said the fitness sector could learn a lot from the fast food chain in the wider sense in terms of how it reaches out to the next generation: “It offers low barriers to entry cost-wise and it’s the first place they can go without their parents. They’re made welcome, they can use digital screens to place their order, it's affordable, they can stay for a long time, they’re treated as a customer and they feel as though they belong.”

The aspiration is for gyms to do the same, but to go deeper with the engagement.

Just do it

“It takes times and perseverance, but just do it,” said Dr Hussain Al-Zubaidi, a GP who has pioneered the use of physical activity to improve the health of “frequent flyers” – people registered with his practice who were visiting the GPs 50 times a year.

CEO of Wave Active, Duncan Kerr – who is interviewed in the upcoming edition HCM said he’s achieved success through being a door kicker: “The pandemic has opened up more opportunities for collaboration with the NHS, but you need to have relentless resilience, keep trying to engage and pay due respect to their challenges.”

Wave Active employs health coaches and offers programmes of eight sessions for free, which is funded by those who choose to stay on as a paying member afterwards.

“Just do it. Be creative on funding and go for lots of different pots. Don’t be afraid to change,” says Karl Hayes, managing director of Impulse Leisure. The charitable trust has succeeded in getting funding from a variety of sources, including cultural budgets, is taking programmes out into the community and is creating stickiness by running coffee mornings for carers.

Make Britain Strong

The day ended with a fireside chat with weightlifter, Emily Campbell, who took bronze in the +81kg category of the Paris Olympics. She was interviewed by Alliance Leisure CEO, Sarah Watts.

Campbell, who came from a Nottingham estate and whose sister swam for Jamaica at the Paris Olympics, is on a mission to get the UK more healthy through strength training. She appeared on Sky News Breakfast on the morning of the conference, along with UK Active CEO, Huw Edwards, talking about her ambition to inspire the nation to start lifting.

To read HCM's interview with Duncan Kerr, CEO of Wave Active, click herehere to sign up for your complimentary digital subscription.