About

Since 2017, Sport England has invested in a variety of communities across England to address inequalities in, and barriers to, physical activity. These investments are an important part of its ambitious ten-year vision to transform lives and communities, Uniting the Movement.

Sport England’s approach aims to support physical activity at different levels – from individual to social environment, organisations, institutions, physical environments, and policy.
This is known as a ‘whole systems approach' - recognising that tackling inactivity at scale and achieving meaningful impact requires changes at these multiple levels.
When a whole systems approach is rooted in the distinctive characteristics and insights of people who live and work there, it is referred to as a ‘place-based approach' more details of the whole and place based approaches can be found on our website here.

The National Evaluation and Learning Partnership (NELP) are a consortium of experts from Sheffield Hallam University, Hartpury and York Universities, Collaborate CIC, Substance Ltd with consultancy from Dr Rick Davies. The Team are collectively working with stakeholders from Sport England and System Partners such as Active Partnerships to conduct a collaborative evaluation of Whole-system and Place-based approaches, to identify factors that promote an increase in physical activity and reduce inequalities across Places.
Find out more about the methods used to achieve this on our webpage here

Since its inception NELP has adapted to support the growing number of Place Partners now involved in the work and the Team continue to focus their efforts on supporting Places to evaluate effectively and provide quality data to support decisions to enable improved physical activity levels for all.

Our Team brings together a broad range of skills and experience in evaluation and health inequalities. Further information about who we are and what we do can be found below.