Place partnership: Salford

Place Partner Mission

Since 2018 Salford  have been part of Greater Manchester’s Place Partnership with Sport England to build healthier, more active communities.

The partnership aims to reduce inactivity and health inequalities. To do this we take a place-based, approach that brings together people, communities, and organisations to create sustainable solutions to inactivity.

Key learnings (2019-24)

Salford used the place-based partnership to drive a more whole systems approach in the borough. This included pushing for consistency across sectors from a strategic level down to a neighbourhood level. Salford identified the 3 areas where they believe they have made the most significant improvements.  

Involving local people and growing assets

Salford have many examples of how they have successfully worked in a hyperlocal place-based way. The most prominent examples include the creation of “the Den” a youth hub that targeted ant social behaviour in Walkden. The second example is a hyperlocal health marketing campaign in Eccles. Both areas of work took a community centred approach and built on existing local assets. The two examples also highlighted examples of good cross sector collaboration. The Den was a joint project between Salford community leisure (SCL) and Salford Youth Alliance. While the work in Eccles was a joint piece of work with the place team, public health and a PCN.  

Cross sector work

One of Salford place teams biggest success is the Salford Physical Activity alliance (SPAA). Originally a small group dedicated to place based working . The group has significantly grown, both in membership and influence. Standing at over 100 members, from multiple sectors. It now guides the implementation of place work, and also the implementation of the Moving in Salford framework.

Salford have also made great strides in their collaboration with PCN and GPs. Through targeted work in Eccles, the public health team have been able to raise the profile of physical activity in GP surgeries in PCNs. An initial relationship with a Sport & Exercise registrar, the place team were able to create opportunities for healthcare professionals to better engage with physical activity, and promote it for their patients. This includes offering CPD opportunities, including Active Practises and Physical Activity Clinical Champion training.

Another example of the place team collaboration with the VSCE sector, local young people, GM Moving and SLC is highlighted in the Oakwood Active video.

Strategic approach and leadership

Through the place partnership influence physical activity is now embedded across multiple polices.  One example of how the place partnership has influenced policy is the creation of the Salford Moving framework and action plan. This took key learnings from from early evaluations and helped shape the framework. This has resulted with place partner principles are interwoven throughout the framework.

The test and learn nature of the place partnerships also created a culture of ownership and leadership within the work. This resulted in the development of many individuals from the early days of the local pilot into more senior roles across the system. This has supported the spread of place partnership principles, and their advocacy has supported the rising profile of physical activity within the system.  

GM Moving Podcast

Released on Thursday 8th September 2022, Salford was the focus of episode 5 of the GM Moving podcast as series two looked at each locality's Place Partners  work.

"We've talked about retrofitting to people's homes around energy efficiency, we've talked about retrofitting people's cars potentially around emissions, but it's almost getting to the point well actually we need to almost retrofit and make some of our roads and our places more accessible."

Host Eve caught up with Salford's Local Pilot Lead Pete alongside regular guest Nicole, one of her Greater Sport colleagues from the central GM Local Pilot team.

Full transcript of the episode can be found here.

The episode can be listened to here, or found on Apple and Spotify podcast. 

Click here to learn about Salford deepening work