Physical activity
Globally, physical inactivity contributes to millions of premature deaths each year. It is the fourth leading risk factor for death globally, behind high blood pressure, tobacco use, and high blood sugar and contributes to significant percentages of deaths from heart disease (over 25%), diabetes (around 27%), and breast/colon cancers (21 to 25%).
Conversely, people who have a physically active lifestyle have a 20% to 35% lower risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and stroke compared to those who have a sedentary lifestyle. Regular physical activity is also associated with a reduced risk of diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis and colon and breast cancer and with improved mental health. In older adults, physical activity is associated with increased functional capacities.
Physical inactivity costs the NHS in the UK over £1 billion annually. In addition, it contributes to major healthcare expenses associated with conditions like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers, with total UK costs (including wider society) reaching approximately £7.4 billion yearly.
Physical activity and leisure activities more broadly can positively influence physical, psychological and spiritual health.
Department of Heath physical activity guidelines recommend that over a week adults should undertake a total of at least 150 minutes of at least moderate physical activity. Moderate activity can be achieved through brisk walking, cycling, gardening and housework, as well as various sports and exercise. Alternately, an adequate level of activity can be achieved over a week by undertaking 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity such as running, football or swimming. All adults should also aim to improve muscle strength on at least two days a week and minimise sedentary activities.
A long-term trend away from manual occupations and toward more sedentary lifestyles, increased car ownership and road traffic, has meant that people in the UK are now much less physically active than in the 1960s. However, recently the picture has been improving.
In April 2025, Sport England reported that the number of people playing sport and taking part in physical activity in England was at the highest level on record, with over two-thirds of the adult population meeting the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines of doing 150 minutes, or more, of moderate intensity physical activity a week in 2023-24. This equated to 30 million adults in England playing sport or taking part in physical activity every week, up more than 2.4 million from when survey first ran in 2016.
Physical activity in Herefordshire
In terms of active leisure facilities, Herefordshire has indoor leisure or swimming facilities in Bromyard, Kington, Hereford, Ledbury, Leominster, Ross-on-Wye and Wigmore. In addition, the River Wye, Malvern Hills, Black Mountains and Offa's Dyke long-distance path offer a variety of outdoor leisure opportunities.
In 2023, the Community Wellbeing Survey of Herefordshire adults found that just under a third (31%) said they exercise or do physical activity on every day of the week and almost half (48%) said they do this on five days or more. One in ten (10%) said they do not take part in any exercise/activity.
To determine the proportion of people across Herefordshire who are meeting the government's physical activity guidelines, people who said they do not do 30 minutes of exercise on five or more days a week were asked whether they think they typically did 150 minutes of moderate exercise or activity across a week (but perhaps less frequently and across larger stretches of time). Among this subset, two thirds (65%) said they typically do at least 150 minutes of exercise/activity per week. Overall, this equated to 74% of all people within the sample saying they take part in 150 minutes or more of exercise/activity in a week.
Data from the Sport England’s Active Lives Survey show that in 2023-24, 74.0% of Herefordshire adults were physically active, compared to 64.1% in the West Midlands and 67.4% in England. Physical activity in Herefordshire had increased from 66.8% in 2017-18.
In 2023-24, 15.8% of Herefordshire adults were physically inactive, a significantly lower proportion than in the West Midlands (24.9%) and England (22.0%).
50.8% of children and young people (aged 5 to 15) were physically active in 2023-24, similar to the West Midlands (47.1%) and England (47.8%).
The 2024 Herefordshire Children & Young People’s Quality of Life Survey found that 28% of Year 6 boys and 18% of Year 6 girls reported that they took part in hard exercise on at least 5 days in the previous week. For secondary school pupils and further education students the figures were 21% of boys and 9% of girls in each case.