Concerns over slump in activity levels among Dorset children

By Trevor Bevins, Local Democracy Reporting Service

Exercise for Dorset children and many adults has slumped this year.

An increasing number of children now appear to be taking no exercise at all – causing concern for health and education professionals.

Among adults the evidence suggests there has been an increase in exercise for wealthier people with a drop among the less well off.

There is also concern, in the long-term, for the future of some private gyms and for public access to shared sporting facilities in some schools.

A meeting of Dorset’s health and wellbeing board on Wednesday also heard that news of a possible Covid vaccine has led to some people taking the decision not to try and improve their health – but to wait until they are protected by a vaccine.

Martin Kimberley from Active Dorset told the meeting that nationally there had been an overall 7 per cent drop in physical activity during the pandemic.

He said that in Dorset it was estimated that 9,000 children were now doing no physical activity at all and that less than 20 per cent of all children reached the government guideline for the amount of activity they ought to be doing.

Across Dorset more than 81,000 adults in both the Dorset Council area and the BCP council area are classed as being physically inactive.

He said that GPs in the county were reporting that they were now seeing more sedentary children – with a near ending, in many schools, of any out of school hours activity clubs. Many other organisations, working with children, were no longer offering sessions and even where these were available numbers attending were well down.

He said that a whole cohort of children this year had missed out on the learn to swim programme.

Mr Kimberley said that where gyms and leisure centres had re-opened fears about catching Covid, and Covid restrictions, had resulted in numbers being down by as much as 60 per cent.

He said that while some private gyms could be at risk from closure because of a drop in income he was also concerned about the level of activities run through village halls and community halls being lost.

Karyn Punchard from Dorset Council said support was being offered to leisure centres where the council had a direct involvement – but she said that the council was also having to help with leisure centres which were run under other agreements, such as Bridport and Gillingham, which were not eligible for the full range of Government support.

“We are going through a period of change and it’s difficult to predict how we might recover,” she said.

Cllr Rebecca Knox, the board chair, said she found it “really concerning” to discover that so many children were no longer taking any physical activity which could have long-term implications for their health, both physical and mental.

She called for schools to offer more physical activities, where they could within the guidelines, and also urged parish and town councils to keep their play areas and sporting areas open.

County education director Mark Blackman said most schools had continued to offer PE and other sporting activities and were, he said, keen to do more when they were able to. He said that many out of school clubs were not operating, although some schools were doing more than others, and inter-school sporting competitions had stopped because of the pandemic: “I don’t get the sense there has been a mass shut down…I think Dorset is actually bucking the trend,” he said.