Place partnerships: Stockport

Place Partner Mission

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

Key learnings (2019-24)

As part of Greater Manchester’s place partnership Stockport has shown how collaboration and community engagement can help people reduce health inequalities and encourage people to be more active more often.

Stockport’s place work aims to rethink physical activity and connect efforts across the system at both strategic and day to day levels. This has included

• Exploring collaborations across sectors
• Aligning governance structure that embrace place partner principles
• Re-positioning physical activity as a tool to tackle wider inequalities.

Collaboration, governance, and shared strategy

Over the last five years Stockport have worked hard to restructure their governance to take a more whole systems approach to work. The focus of this restructure has been to create shared ownership of the place mission across the system. It has also built a shared voice and explored how processes can support implementation. This is highlighted in the  "One Stockport Borough plan and Active Communities Strategy". To learn more about Stockport’s governance please click here

These strategies embrace collaboration across sectors. Stockport Moving Together, and One Stockport has created a local movement that celebrates and supports its communities. This shared ownership is reflected in the implementation plan, which has over 30 owners from the statutory, charity, VCSE and commercial sectors.

Learning together

Stockport place team have worked hard to embed a learning culture across the borough. This has included adopting action research methodology. This research encourages learning in action, by both simultaneously investigating and trying to solve a problem. In practise this is sometimes referred to as a test and learn approach. This involved encouraging the place team to try new ways of working and adapt their approach as they go.

This approach supported new ways of thinking and challenged traditional ways of working. This work helped build a better understanding of communities and their environments. While the plan-do-review approach encouraged the team to consistently reflect and learn from the work.

Although it was first tested with the Place team. This approach is now widely used across Stockport and aims to be the standard way of working with neighbourhoods.

Tackling inequalities

The Marmot principles have been key to Stockport’s place work. This has ensured that those with greatest need have remained at the heart of Stockport’s place partnership. This is demonstrated through Stockport’s dedicated work with

• Children and young people with SEND
• Residents with long term health conditions
• Brinnington residents

This work has been underpinned by place principles and focused changing how we think and work with our residents and places. Through test and learn the place team have had a number of successes, which have each contributed to wider changes within Stockport. One example of this is the Confidence Walk.

Created with Age UK Stockport in collaboration with Life Leisure, confidence walks were initially created by feedback from Brinnington residents. They identified multiple barriers from those interested in walking but felt unable to join outdoor walks. The confidence walk was designed to help challenge and support residents in overcoming these barriers. By walking in a sports hall with chairs, it provided residents a chance walk, socialise and build their confidence. Since its inception the walks have seen multiple positive outcomes.

• Its popularity has seen the creation of new confidence walks across Stockport. With the walk now a core part of Life Leisure offer.
• It has highlighted the importance of community engagement in identifying and understanding barriers and challenges residents face.
• The ethos has led to more programmes taking the “confidence” approach. With confidence cycling and swimming currently being explored.
• Participants of the walks have built confidence and social connections.

To read more about Stockport's Confidence walks please read the case story or watch the video.

GM Moving Podcast

Released in September 2022, the seventh episode of series two of the GM Moving podcast focused on the Place Partners  work in Stockport. 

In the episode Eve Holt spoke to Ross McGuigan and Stephen Pearson the Stockport Leads about the importance of community consultation and maintaining an open dialogue with communities. 

The full transcript can be found here.

To listen to the full episode please see below, or search The GM Moving podcast on other podcast providers.

Click here to learn about Stockport's deepening work