Place partners: Bolton

Place Partners is a Sport England funded programme that invests in a behaviour change approach in a place to enable sustainable change and gain valuable learnings that can be shared across the country.

From July 2018, Bolton utilised research and insight to create their initial 12-month plan, starting from April 2019; this can be viewed here.

Bolton’s place partner work focuses in three key areas: Brightmet and Little Lever; Central and Great Lever, and Farnworth and Kearsley.

It is also focused on three key population groups: Children and young people aged 5-18 in out-of-school settings; people aged 40-60 with, or at risk of, long term conditions: specifically, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disorders and; people out of work, and people in work but at risk of becoming workless.

Local Motion

One of the projects that the place partner team in Bolton have been testing is the 'Local Motion' walking project.

This project helps residents to become more active and connected through a series of weekly one mile health walks through local communities across Bolton.

Local Motion has tested how buddying can impact physical activity levels, particularly working with residents who have caring responsibilities and are at risk of social isolation.

GM Moving Podcast

Episode 2 of the second series of the GM Moving podcast, released on Thursday 18 August 2022, looks at Bolton's place partner work. 

Host Eve Holt speaks to Tracy Lumer, Public Health specialist at Bolton Council, about the approach taken in Bolton and how the place partners ways of working have gone beyond physical activity and even supported the Covid vaccination response.

Full transcript for the episode can be found here.

Listen to the full episode here, or search for it on other podcast platforms such as Spotify or Apple.