High quality expertise and insight

Online Events

Following the release of our Annual Activity and Disability Survey report 2022-23 in June, we began to host a series of free online events, each one focusing on key theme from the survey results. The events aim to bring Activity Alliance, key partners and disabled people together to share key insight and expertise, and help to scope future needs and strategies for our work and for others.

Influencing Policy

We continue to engage in public affairs activity and advocate for meaningful change for disabled people. This includes being part of influential working groups for policy across the sector.

In April 2024 we launched our manifesto for change - Fight for fairness: Disabled people’s right to sport and physical activity. It’s developed with contributions and insight from disabled people, advocates and organisations in the sport, physical activity, and voluntary sector.

To ensure disabled people have equal access to sport and physical activity, we called upon the next government to:

1. Protect the benefits - Provide clearer understanding and wider safeguarding to reassure disabled people that being regularly active will not threaten their benefits and other forms of government financial assistance.

2. Equip health and care workers - With NHS, ensure that better processes are in place for health and care workers to support disabled people to use physical activity in ways which work best for them.

3. Increase accessible outdoor spaces - Take a leading role in promoting and legislating design standards that ensure accessibility in local and national spaces.

Throughout the year, we also collaborated with partners on several reports and responses.

In August 2023, we responded to the government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport new sport strategy. Our CEO said:
“It’s incredibly important that a clear and unambiguous figure has been put on what should be achieved by 2030. We want to work alongside Government to help see 700,000 more disabled people being active in sport and activity by that date.”

In 2022, we supported the launch of a Sport England report on the future of public sector leisure. We also joined Sport and Recreation Alliance to urge the Government to rethink the exclusion of sport and leisure centres from the Energy Bill Discount Scheme in January 2023.

On 3 December, the United Nation’s International Day of Disabled People is celebrated globally to promote the rights and wellbeing of disabled people. In 2023, we called on the government to give disabled people more support to enable them to be involved in sport and activity. Our Vice President John Amaechi OBE called for action:
"The government have rightly committed to focusing on increasing activity levels across the board, but without addressing the specific inequalities that disabled people face in sport, you risk leaving behind those who are hit the hardest by inactivity.”

This followed with us joining 57 organisation across the UK’s sport and activity community, including ParalympicsGB, in signing an open letter to the Prime Minister, urging him to reconsider the downgrading of the Minister for Disabled People role.