Inspiring active communities

We’ve teamed up with Sport England to help distribute grants from their ‘Tackling Inequalities’ fund on behalf of the Richmond Group of Charities.

The purpose of the fund is to reduce the negative impact of coronavirus and the widening of the inequalities in sport and physical activity through increasing availability of exercise opportunities in local communities within England.

Latest update: 1 April 2021

We’ve been successful in accessing £250,000 top up funding from Sport England’s Tackling Inequalities Fund. This fund will be made available to organisations in Englandto help support people with long-term health conditions to get active.

Versus Arthritis have also secured an additional £100,000 funding to open up the fund UK wide!

Through the Let’s Move Together fund, we plan to make £100,000 available to local organisations in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland which are supporting people with arthritis and musculoskeletal conditions to get active.

This is because of the clear benefits we’ve seen from Sport England funding community-based organisations supporting people with long-term health conditions to get active.

Tackling Inequalities Fund (England): applications open from 1 April

Read the application guidance (PDF, 406 KB) and access the Grant Tracker to submit your application.

Please note: we expect this fund to be oversubscribed and it will close once we reach our capacity.

Let’s Move Together (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland): applications open from 1 May

The application details will be published on 1 May.

How will the funding be used?

The funding will be targeted to help support people with long-term health conditions, Black, Asian minority ethnic groups and lower socio-economic groups.

There have been some great ideas from organisations so far on ways to offer support and encourage local sport and physical activity projects with these audiences.

As well as supporting specific activities to increase availability of exercise opportunities in local communities, this fund will also support organisations and groups facing financial hardship due to the COVID crisis, with a view of enabling delivery of sport and physical activity work in the future.

What's next?

We will be working with our successful applicants to offer support, if needed. For example, social media promotion, sharing best practice and ways to evaluate these programmes to keep learning and to do more for people with arthritis.

Additional support for applicants

If you want any support or you would like to discuss your idea, get in touch.

You can contact either Louise Shaw (Trusts Officer) or Ashleigh Ahlquist (Physical Activity Manager) on PhysicalActivityVA@versusarthritis.org.

We’re here whenever you need us.

• If you would like to talk to someone, you can call our free helpline on 0800 5200 520 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 8pm)
• Chat to our Arthritis Virtual Assistant
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