Committee publication · Report · 22 May 2026 · HC 1180
Large Print – 8th Report – Healthy Ageing: physical activity in an ageing society
From: Health and Social Care Committee
Inquiry: Healthy Ageing: physical activity in an ageing society
Government response deadline: 22 July 2026
Summary
This Health and Social Care Committee report examines physical activity's critical role in healthy ageing. It finds that despite overwhelming evidence that physical activity prevents major illnesses and dementia, reduces falls, and narrows health inequalities, it remains treated as optional across the NHS and social care. The report calls for embedding physical activity as a core clinical intervention, commissioning evidence-based exercise programmes to reverse frailty, leveraging leisure infrastructure, expanding social prescribing, and launching a national campaign to challenge negative ageing stereotypes.
Key findings
- Physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor contributing to deaths globally and costs the UK £7.4 billion annually; 44% of people aged 75+ are physically inactive, rising to 62% in the most deprived areas.
- Only 33% of adults with long-term conditions discuss physical activity with health professionals despite 76% taking action when advised; 80% of GPs are unfamiliar with Physical Activity Guidelines and 55% have received no training.
- Exercise programmes like FaME can reverse frailty, reduce dementia risk, and return £2.36–£50.59 for every £1 invested, yet only 5% of integrated care boards and 15% of local authorities commission such programmes.
- Health inequalities create a 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy between richest and poorest regions; 69% of older people in least deprived areas meet activity guidelines versus 55% in most deprived.
- Physical activity remains insufficiently prioritised despite being recommended in 98 NICE guidelines; it is treated as an optional add-on rather than core intervention due to funding constraints and lack of strategic direction.
Recommendations
- The Department should require integrated care boards to embed physical activity as a core preventive intervention within population health strategies, with clear accountability for delivery across healthy ageing, long-term condition management, and health inequalities frameworks.
- The Department should work with integrated care boards to develop a national roll-out of best-practice models supporting clinicians to have conversations about physical activity, including communication strategies, messaging on benefits, and resources for managers.
- Integrated care boards should explore methods for increasing investment in physical activity prescription as part of a broader shift towards prevention, pursuing it alongside appropriate clinical treatments.
- As part of the Modern Service Framework for frailty and dementia, the government should identify and set clear standards for delivering evidence-based exercise programmes at the duration and intensity necessary to deliver outcomes, with accountability arrangements ensuring consistent uptake across integrated care boards.
- The government should set out how it will judge whether integrated care boards are successfully moving towards population health delivery models, including how data collection and monitoring will be standardised to allow meaningful evaluation and learning across integrated care boards.
- The government should launch a national movement campaign focused on those approaching retirement and the least active, starting a multi-generational conversation challenging negative assumptions about ageing.
- Embed active design principles into planning guidance to support creation of healthy, active places; act across government to remove policy, funding, and accountability barriers to physical activity, including local remedies for poor infrastructure and national transport and planning decisions.
- Recognise social prescribing as a core mechanism for increasing physical activity and expand support and resources; use social care reform to address high levels of physical inactivity with greater emphasis on physical activity in Care Quality Commission assessments.
Tone
CriticalTopics
public-healthageing-and-carehealth-inequalitiespreventive-medicinenhs-reform
Key actors
Layla Moran, Professor Chris Whitty, NHS England, Adam Blaze, Activity Alliance, Norfolk and Waveney ICB, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB, Sport England
Notable line
“If physical activity were a drug, we would refer to it as a miracle cure, due to the great many illnesses it can prevent and help treat.”
Key Quotes
“If physical activity were a drug, we would refer to it as a miracle cure, due to the great many illnesses it can prevent and help treat.”
“England, described the lack of routine conversations about physical activity as a "failing of us as a [medical] profession" and emphasised clinicians' "professional responsibility" to make a "very clear statement" about its benefits.”
“… was because physical activity was still largely viewed as an optional extra, added after strategies had been designed, rather than treated as a core solution to improving health.”
“… concern that the ability for physical activity to remain as a strategic priority was "fragile" because as ICBs "go through changes and cuts [prevention was] still one of the first things to go."”
“… arguing that clinicians would not "give half a dose of chemotherapy to somebody." 63 58 London Sport ( HAP0141 ) and [Professor Dawn Skelton] Q116 59 …”
“… concluded that early interventions for frailty could result in preventing and delaying the onset of dementia.”
Source · parliament.uk record ↗