Record exercise levels mask England’s growing health divide

England is more active than at any point in the past decade, but reflecting on figures reveals a stark divide in who is benefiting from the nation’s growing appetite for physical activity.

Sport England’s Active Lives Adult Survey, published this year and covering November 2024 to November 2025, shows 64.6% of adults (equivalent to 30.9 million people) achieved at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week. That represents a record high and an increase of 859,000 active adults in just one year.

Behind the positive national headline, however, significant physical activity inequality remains.

Just 53.8% of adults from the least affluent backgrounds are active, compared with 73.2% among the most affluent. Activity levels are also considerably lower among disabled people and those with long-term health conditions, older adults and some ethnic groups. The divide affecting people living with disability is particularly striking.

Activity Alliance’s analysis of the same Active Lives data found that 39.3% of disabled adults are inactive, compared with just 19.7% of non-disabled adults. In other words, disabled people remain almost twice as likely to be physically inactive.

Perhaps more concerning is that the disparity has not narrowed alongside England’s overall improvement.

Activity Alliance says the inactivity gap between disabled and non-disabled adults has actually widened slightly, from 19.3 percentage points in the previous year to 19.6 percentage points in the latest figures. The proportion of disabled adults classed as inactive has remained broadly unchanged.

That means England can simultaneously be celebrating record participation while one of the groups that could potentially benefit most from greater physical activity remains disproportionately excluded.