Published on: 08,Jul 2026

Emma Hutchins, Senior Influencing Manager – We are Undefeatable powered by the Richmond Group of Charities

The Health and Social Care Select Committee has published its report, ‘Healthy Ageing: physical activity in an ageing society’. This is the culmination of the Inquiry that looked into how physical activity could help improve the health and wellbeing of people as they age and prevent or manage long-term conditions.  

We were pleased to submit substantial evidence to this Inquiry. Our written and oral evidence focused on tackling the barriers for the least active and advocated for a cross-departmental approach to movement in health and in daily life. We were also delighted to host a distributed dialogue session, enabling our Lived Experience Network to provide insights on what has helped and hindered as they have managed their long-term conditions.    

Welcome recommendations  

These insights are reflected in the final report, which recognises the missed opportunity in not prioritising physical activity. Recommendations to embed movement into healthcare through strategic commissioning, professional practice and the rollout of existing good practice (e.g. social prescribing) are very welcome and could create the conditions for better leveraging physical activity in the support for people with long-term conditions. 

There are also helpful recommendations that advocate movement in daily life. Our Lived Experience Network highlighted the range of barriers in the built environment and in the limitations of local authority budgets, and so recommendations to restore the public health grant and embed active design principles could go some way to addressing those.  

Bringing the recommendations to life 

However, some of the recommendations would require shifts in ICBs’ current priorities or guidance. While this is welcome and there is certainly more ICBs could do, the reality is that many are facing substantial cuts, and capacity to deliver existing requirements is pressured. How can we make this easy and essential for ICBs, while also looking for levers elsewhere, especially in a political context which looks likely to lean deeper into devolution?  

The recommendations also call for government to go further on its shift to prevention, developing a cross-government plan supported by pooled budgets and shared accountability. This has parallels with the Culture, Media and Sport committee’s recommendation to create a movement for health strategy, something we’ve advocated for a long time, and brings all-important accountability and resource. But we know that strategies alone are not enough; we need to see action towards implementation, and we need to see the connections being made across these government policy areas so they pull in the same direction.  

What next? 

This Inquiry, the Game On Inquiry, and NHS England’s Four Ways Forward are examples of momentum building towards better understanding of what it means to move with a long-term condition and the importance of focusing on the least active, who have the most to gain. 

The Richmond Group of Charites is pleased to have played a role in getting to this point, and we stand ready to support the implementation of the recommendations.  With the change in government leadership, it is now more important than ever to keep up momentum and create the conditions people with long-term conditions need to be active.