London

Sports and fitness provision
Westminster has 52 private gyms and 26 private swimming pools. Kensington & Chelsea has 17 private gyms and ten private pools. However, we’ve excluded the commercial sector from our calculations because members of such places are likely to come from all over the capital as they’re usually near to where they work. Also, wealth is one of the key determinants of private-sector gym membership.

Instead, most users of public sports and leisure facilities live in the borough where they’re located. So we asked the Leisure Database Company to research the number of gyms and pools in each borough listed on the Active Places website (www.activeplaces.com) as offering public access. Some of these are ‘dual use’ centres on school sites with public access in the evenings and at weekends. We then divided the number of facilities by the population to show each borough’s commitment to making exercise accessible and affordable to its residents.
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The five boroughs with the best provision are in the ‘wrong’ half of the table when it comes to life expectancy. One of the issues, clearly, is encouraging more residents to use their local facilities. This is already well underway in Barking & Dagenham, which is starting from a very low participation rate (see Physical activity, p18). The borough scooped the 2005 Health and Physical Activity Recognition Award from the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management for its innovative use of physical activity to improve health. For example, its ‘Just Walk’ programme of six free walks every week.

Facilities relative to population

(Source: The Leisure Database Company, an official data supplier to the Sport England – Active Places website, 2006. Populations from 2001 Census)

With thanks to the London Health Observatory (www.lho.org.uk), the Leisure Database Company (www.theleisuredatabase.com) and Tom Mendelsohn in compiling this feature.