Lincolnshire County Council is taking action after the region was named the most inactive shire county in England.
An Active Lives survey, run by national sporting body Sport England, showed around 30% of people living in Lincolnshire are considered “inactive”.
As a result, Lincolnshire County Council’s Health and Wellbeing board has joined with Active Lincolnshire to create the Lincolnshire Physical Activity Taskforce (L-PAT).
The taskforce was launched in October 2018, but an ongoing County Council report has since revealed it is now in the process of building a blueprint explaining how activity can be improved across Lincolnshire.
The latest phase of the project, mapping the reality of the situation at a local level, began this January. During this time, staff will look at the infrastructure stopping the county’s residents from achieving the council’s goal of daily physical activity. The finished blueprint is set to be released in April 2019.
Councillor Mrs Susan Woolley, chairman of Lincolnshire County Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board said: “Lincolnshire has its own problems to deal with. We grow the most vegetables anywhere in the country, and yet still obesity is a real issue.
I think it is getting better, but I do not expect to see any meaningful difference before the next five to 10 years. This is a generational problem, and it will take a generation at least to resolve.”
Funding for the report will come from a number of health and well-being agencies across the county on a “goodwill basis”, Cllr Woolley explained.
Llara Munn, Marketing and Communications officer at Active Lincolnshire and a board member for L-PAT, said: “Activity levels generally speaking have a lot to do with demographics, so low socio-economic groups tend to be less active than high socioeconomic groups.
Lincolnshire is a big county. It’s a huge, huge area and it’s very rural. That means it’s quite difficult to access some areas.”
Active Lincolnshire work in partnership with Lincolnshire County Council to encourage physical activity across the county through promoting schemes and initiatives aimed at introducing small amounts of daily activity.