The Active Lives Survey asks people aged 16 and over across England about the sport and physical activities they take part in.
Sport England has released their latest round of data recording the levels of physical activity that adults (16+) do. The Active Lives headlines (found here) from 2025 shows that 64.6% of adults (30.9 million people) met the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines of doing 150 minutes, or more, of moderate intensity physical activity a week. An increase of 859,000 adults compared to the previous 12 months.
However, as we know from previous year’s data, these gains are not seen for all people. The report underlines that many longstanding inequalities remain.
Inactive populations vary with different demographic features. With regards to gender, Men (23%) are less likely to be inactive than Women (26%). This gap is even wider for those who describe themselves in another way (34%). However, this is based on a very small sample size.
Those from lower socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to be inactive (33%) compared to the most affluent (19%).
Those from an Asian (excl. Chinese), heritage are now more likely to be inactive, with 33% of the population getting less than 30 minutes of physical activity a week. Black (30%) or Other ethnic group (33%) communities are still more likely to be inactive than others.
More data to come in the following weeks, so please check back for local analysis as per the usual report.
If you would like to know more about your specific area, or the groups you work with, please get in touch with Active Sussex’s Insight Officer, Mac Ince.
Please note Public Health England (PHE) include gardening and only include data for those aged 19+ so different activity rates are shown in the PHE data.
Our analysis of data for Sussex. Looking at Local Authority levels, Active and Inactive communities (demographic analysis), and Children and Young People.
Sport England have estimated inactivity levels at a super local levels.
Follow the link below to access tools, data and reports relating to the Active Lives Small Area Estimates project.
The project takes data from the annual Active Lives surveys for both adults and children and young people and uses statistical modelling to estimate results at the level of small geographical areas. This data is indicative rather than definitive. But the data is still useful for looking at local populations.
More specifically, the project produces estimates of the proportions of adults and children and young people who are active and inactive/less active at two small area levels: Lower Super Output Area and Middle Layer Super Output Area. It also estimates the proportion of adults taking part in sport.
The data can also be interrogated through different lenses such as:
Age & Gender
Ethnicity
Disability
Socio-Economic features.
Watch our video for an overview of the previous results for Sussex for 2020-21.
You can view the results in each Sussex local authority and compare with the county and national results below.
Visit our Inactivity Maps page to view the activity levels at local authority and neighbourhood level.