FAQs

ukactive is a not-for-profit body comprised of members and partners from across the UK active lifestyle sector. Members represent the full spectrum of the activity sector, from local leisure centres to multinational brands, from facility operators to activity providers working out of community centres. Our membership amounts of over 3,500 organisations and spreads the length and breadth of the UK.

We are committed to getting more people more active, more often, and to working with any organisation who shares this goal. By working with our partners, including Public Health England, Sport England and ASDA, we are working to turn the tide on inactivity and prevent over 37,000 premature deaths per year in the UK.

We recognise the vital role of the active lifestyle sector in facilitating, sponsoring and promoting physical activity. That’s why we undertake key research into the activity and lifestyle sector and work closely with commercial brands and local authorities to develop and support initiatives which encourage more people to be more active, more often.

ukactive is independently funded by contributions from members and partners and receives no core Government funding.

ukactive was created as a not-for-profit trade body in 1991, with the name FIA (Fitness Industry Association). ukactive became the brand name of the organisation in November 2012.

In November 2012, ukactive changed its name from FIA (Fitness Industry Association) to ukactive.

This followed a major stakeholder engagement process and extensive consultation with members and partners. We feel ukactive more accurately reflected what the FIA had been doing for some time – serving our partners to accelerate the advancements of the sector and support it to deliver on its mission to get more people, more active, more often.

For the sake of turning the tide on inactivity, we do not champion any single form of activity over another, nor do we have any bias between organisations that operate as private for profit companies or community based not for profit organisations. We feel that ukactive better reflects that fact, which has long been the case.

There are a range of benefits that you will receive by joining ukactive. From a volunteer running a walking group to the largest retailer in the world, if you have a role to play or a benefit to be gained from getting the nation more active, more often, there is something in ukactive for you.

If you have a role to play in, or benefit to be gained from, getting the nation more active, you can join ukactive.

There are a range of benefits that you can receive by joining ukactive, which depend on your own organisation and its goal. From a volunteer running a walking group to the largest retailer in the world, if you have a role to play or a benefit to be gained from getting the nation more active, there is something in ukactive for you.

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Get in touch with the team at ukactive who would be more than happy to help.

ukactive is not a statutory or governing body, and therefore we have no legal remit for processing consumer complaints. However, in the interest of protecting the sector and upholding standards, we do have a procedure for complaints from consumers in regards to our members.

For the last 21 years our mission has been more people, more active, more often. We’ve never claimed to be solely responsible for this, but we recognise the key role our sector has to play. Our new identity is a reflection of this – ukactive will seek to work with any organisation that has some benefit to be gained or role to play in getting the nation moving.

We’d be being negligent if we didn’t try to galvanise the great potential that exists in this sector with a wider coalition of partners given the levels of and risks of inactivity in the UK.

The ukactive Research Institute at Greenwich University, partnership with Asda on Asda Active, with Sport England on spogo, and the Joint Consultative Forum with the medical sector are all examples of this.

No. A well supported and represented membership is a crucial to achieving more together and getting more people, more active, more often.

We’re only interested in doing things that help get people active and that means our members remain at the heart of what we do. We’ll be constantly striving for ways to ensure they are supported better.

And if, for example, we are able to link our members with a business keen to get its staff healthier, or provide a tool for people to find and book physical activity (whether with our members or not) then we are doing our job.

ukactive is not a new organisation, but an organisation that has been around for over 20 years which is taking the initiative to adapt and change to best serve its core purpose.

We are not seeking to move into other people’s territory, but will work with anybody in pursuit of getting more people, more active, more often.

We will always work in partnership. For example we have Memorandums of Understanding with SkillsActive, Sport England and the Sport and Recreation Alliance. We working closely in partnership with Public Health England and the Local Government Association and have played a significant role in supporting the development of CIMSPA.

The mission of turning the tide on inactivity is much bigger than ukactive and we would only scratch the surface on our own, which is why our existing strategic relationships – with Department of Health, Skills Active, Sport England, ASDA, Danone, charities and sports bodies etc are so important.

ukactive is here to work in partnership with other organisations to achieve shared goals.

We can influence positively by making connections between active lifestyle providers and those who promote active lifestyles and anybody else who is interested in getting the nation more active, more often.

We have research capability, offer CSR consultancy to major consumer brands and provide targeted support to ensure that the leisure industry serves its customers to the fullest. More important than ukactive’s size is the breadth and reach of our members and partners, whose scale ensures they have a significant impact.

For instance, Water Babies is teaching 30,000 babies and parents to swim every week, Premier Sport is teaching 150,000 children to get more active in schools every week, Danone is bringing together 40 different countries to participate in the official Junior School Football World Cup, and Everyone Active has a database of over one million people they are supporting to get more active, more often.

These members and partners have the size and scale to get more people, more active, more oftenwe are just supporting them to do so.

However, each of our partners has the right to decide if they want to work with us on a particular initiative or not. We believe that the benefits of working together with ukactive are too good to ignore.

Changing the branding of over 3000 fitness and leisure centres is no small feat and it won’t happen overnight rather from now until the New Year operators will have numerous opportunities to get hold of the new brand.

We’ll be distributing stickers with the new logo.

Where the old FIA logo was used in a bespoke manner we can provide visuals but the change will need to be made at operators cost.

Since the FIA was formed it has always had a reach across the UK. ukactive is no different.

Many of our partnerships are already UK-wide, for instance we are working with Asda to deliver community programmes across all of their UK outlets and not just those in the England. Additionally, our Research Institute has fielded applications from across the UK and is delivering one of the most ambitious research projects ever in partnership with North Lanarkshire Leisure and Edinburgh Leisure.

However, we do recognise there is more we could do to support and promote active lifestyles in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and we will be actively seeking ways to do this over the coming months.

Our new partnership with SkillsActive includes a clear strategy to support partners in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to support partners to ensure that their professionals have the proper skills to get their local communities more active.

If you think that ukactive or one of its members is missing an opportunity when it comes to getting more people, more active, more often, then we’d love to hear your thoughts.

ukactive has absolutely no “priority focus” other than getting more people, more active, more often and we work with all of our members and partners who share this aim. In fact our membership reflects a wide breadth of organisations, certainly not just from the private sector.

There are countless examples of how our work supports local authorities. For instance our Research Institute is working with a number of leisure trusts such as North Lanarkshire, Edinburgh, Lifeleisure and local authority management contractors such as DC Leisure.

Our fledgling benchmarking service works with Greenwich Leisure, SLM and DC Leisure as well as Fitness First and LA Fitness. We could go on but simply ask any local leisure providers who is unsure of how ukactive can support them to contact the team.

ukactive is not a local authority leisure provider or a walking group delivering physical activity programme. That is the job of our members and partners but we aim to help make their job easier.

That said, we have recently worked directly with a number of consumer brands to deliver active lifestyle programmes on the ground – the ASDA Active campaign coordinated 20 Community events with a number of our members such as Fit4Sport.

Additionally, many of our national efforts ultimately influence “on the ground delivery”, for instance our relationship with the Local Government Association is seeking to support local authorities to deliver their new on their new public health responsibilities.

No – ukactive will work with you whether you are a member or not, but we are able to offer a wide range of services to members and will be looking a continuously improve our offer.

The only pre-cursor to working with ukactive is that you must share our objective to get more people, more active, more often.

It’s clear from the consultation we undertook with our stakeholders that our members like the direction this rebrand represents and appreciate the support and advocacy ukactive can provide.

Our core functions of providing big impact partnerships, high quality member services, campaigns and influence, research and insight and the championing of new technology and a digital legacy apply equally to any type of organisation.

We are also uniquely placed to see how a great idea or good practice in one part of the sector might transfer across to another part, or where mutually beneficial partnerships might be developed with, for example, consumer brands.

Of course there are some projects that support certain members more than others, for instance the development of the Outdoor Code of Practice for exercise delivered in parks and open spaces has often benefits for Nordic Walking whereas the negotiation of music licensing tariffs does not.

ukactive fully supports the active travel agenda and if somebody came to us wanting to get involved in this agenda we’d signpost them to the wide range of great organisations – many of whom are members of ukactive – delivering active travel programmes and initiatives.