Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many (a) men and (b) women regularly participated in sport in each year since 2010.

Sport England collects data on the number of people aged 16+ who engage in sport and physical activity in England through the Active Lives Survey. The latest data is available online (covering the period May 2016 to May 2017): https://www.sportengland.org/media/12458/active-lives-adult-may-16-17-report.pdf

The Active Lives Survey replaced the Active People Survey which collected data from the period of October 2005 to September 2016. Data is available online: https://www.sportengland.org/research/about-our-research/active-people-survey/. Owing to the different methodologies employed, the data sets from the two surveys are not directly comparable.

The Active Lives Survey does not currently capture data for children. Government’s Sporting Future strategy, published in 2015, extended the remit of Sport England to include children aged 5 years and up, outside of the school day. In line with this, Sport England has developed the Active Lives Children survey which is capturing data for children aged 5-15, both in and outside of school. The survey was launched in schools in September 2017 with the first set of results available in early 2019.