Leisure Services: West Lancashire

We also know that education is far more than what we learn in textbooks. It comes from interacting with the world outside the classroom and learning life skills, such as swimming. West Lancashire borough council wants our community to have access to swimming and leisure facilities. It wants our children to form a positive relationship with water. It wants to create a more social community, and it wants a more active community. However, its hands are tied behind its back. It tells me that it needs the Government to bring forward plans for councils to restructure local government finance, so that it can invest in the big capital projects that will support our communities. I appeal to the Government to do that, and to help us to unlock the funding that will give our community access to the facilities it needs.

I know that my colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will be working with the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to improve our communities’ access to leisure facilities. I would like to ask my hon. Friend the Minister what plans the Government have to support access to affordable swimming and leisure facilities for those communities that cannot access private centres.

That said, my Department is responsible for the overall approach to leisure provision across the country. We work closely with Sport England, the Government’s arm’s length body for community sport, to invest more than £250 million of national lottery and Government money annually into some of the most deprived areas of the country to help to increase physical activity levels.

Since 2021, more than £5 million of funding has been invested by Sport England in the West Lancashire constituency. The Government recognise that high-quality, inclusive facilities help to ensure everyone has access to sport. We will continue to support grassroots sport, including the multi-sport grassroots facilities programme, which will bring about £123 million of investment across the UK this year.

Sport and physical activity are central to preventive health, and the biggest health gain comes from supporting those who are inactive, or less active, to move more. Around 28% of people in West Lancashire are inactive. We still want to see that figure come down. Physical activity interventions contribute an immense saving to the NHS by preventing 900,000 cases of diabetes and 93,000 cases of dementia every year. We are committed to working across Government to champion the role of physical activity in preventive health, ensuring it is a key part of the Government’s health mission. For public leisure that means looking at facilities’ potential to support communities on health needs in particular. We are looking at how co-location between sport and health services could help inactive groups. Sport England has taken a place-based investment approach, working with local authorities and active partnerships to encourage system-wide change.

I recently saw that in action in Essex, where local council leaders are working in partnership with Active Essex, local health services and leisure providers to knit services together. They are building strong links between health and leisure sectors, including co-locating services so that people have easy access to a wide range of physical activity opportunities. This means that people with, for example, long-term health conditions can access activities not only to improve their physical health, but that are fun and social as well. In some cases they contribute to getting people back into work.

I have seen the impact of leisure facilities in my own Barnsley South constituency. Your Space Hoyland, which I have visited a number of times, provides swimming, football, badminton, netball, basketball and a gym. The centre is not for profit and reinvests the money that it makes back into facilities. It is also home to a fantastic holiday activities and food programme in the summer, putting leisure at the forefront of the community. Sport and physical activity have a way of bringing people together—we all know that. There are multiple examples of similar work around the country.

GoodGym, for example, is adapting to tackle the increase in isolation and loneliness by offering opportunities to combine physical exercise with volunteering and providing ongoing support to individuals. As the Minister with responsibility for tackling loneliness, I am keen to see what more the Government can do in this space. I recently held a roundtable with organisations working on loneliness, and we will work to drive further progress over the coming months. More broadly, my Department will continue to look at ways to support such thinking as we look ahead to future policy around leisure facilities.

We appreciate the huge contribution that public leisure makes to health and wellbeing. We recognise the benefits of getting people active. My Department will continue to work with the sector to look at ways that health, wellbeing and leisure facilities can work more closely together and support people across the country.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire has made an important contribution today, championing her area, and I thank her for that.