Oldham: Place partnership deepening (2025-28)
Looking forward
Taking the learnings from Failsworth and Glodwick. Oldham are looking to expand into a neighbourhood in each of their five districts.
Oldham’s ambitions for deepening can be categorised into three overlapping themes
• Integrating physical activity across the system.
• Strengthening community capacity
• Tackling inequalities
A downloadable infographic of Oldham ambitions can be accessed for a short summary, or you can read about them more in depth below.
Integrating physical activity across systems
At a system level Oldham are hoping to embed the place partnership principles across new places and spaces. Key to this is work is better connecting and integrating with the Oldham place-based initiatives (PBI) model. This model is recognised in the council’s corporate plan and aims to better connect public and community services across Oldham. By working with and shaping this model, the team is hoping to expand the reach of place partnerships principles to support more active lives.
The importance of system integration is highlighted as key to place based working and is in line with the national learning (link to NELP).
Strengthening community capacity
Building on the success of Develop Glodwick, Oldham aims to create an ‘active partnership’ for each of the new areas in a way that suits them. This will ensure that the local community and local organisations are at the heart of the place work. These partnerships will aim to bring people and organisation together around common goals. While also helping build a greater understanding of the unique strengths and needs of the area.
Oldham also plans to grow and support existing community networks. This includes the newly reformed Sports Club Network and the Active Through Football Network. Through embedding place partner principles within a network Oldham aims to;
- Grow community voice
- Build a shared purpose and narrative across organisations
- Establish a way of working aligned to the principle
The goal of this way of working is to increase the number of community advocates for physical activity. While also strengthening relationships within the communities. By improving relationships with community groups there will be shift in relationships from transactional to relational as already seen in Active through Football work.
Tackling structural inequalities
Oldham is using a two-pronged approach to tackle deep-rooted inequalities:
- Working closely alongside communities (place-based work)
- Bringing together wider services and organisations (whole systems approach)
At a system level Oldham aims to expand their influence to new systems partners. With the aim of building common goals to support the reduction of physical inactivity and health inequalities.
In Oldham, we’re working to bring communities closer together through local ways of working, like Place-Based Initiatives (PBI) and place partnerships. These efforts help us better understand each neighbourhoods – its strengths, its needs, and the people who live there.
By listening and learning from local communities, we can find better ways to support them. At the same time, we’re helping people build the skills and confidence to encourage others to be more active in their everyday lives.
As more people get involved, we believe they’ll start to see how physical activity can be part of the solution to many challenges – whether it’s improving health, boosting mental wellbeing, or bringing people together.
Further details please contact
- Richard Davis-Boreham