Sport and active recreation

Our plan for sport and physical activity

Our Climbing Higher plan is helping children and adults get involved with sport, walk and exercise more, and stay well. By 2025, we want most people to be taking enough exercise to see significant health benefits.

Sport Wales

We fund Sport Wales to develop and encourage participation in sport and active recreation. 

We tell Sport Wales how we'd like them to spend National Lottery money.

Helping people stay active and at a healthy weight

Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales describes what we will do to help children and adults stay fit and keep to a healthy weight.

We launched the £5 million Healthy and Active Fund in 2018. This is a partnership between Welsh Government, Sport Wales and Public Health Wales. We're funding projects from April 2019 to March 2022 to help people lead healthier lives in their communities. 

Creating an Active Wales is our plan to encourage people to be more active. It is also our plan to increase the number of people taking part in sport.

Free swimming

We've funded free swimming for children under 16 and adults over 60 since 2003. Sport Wales manages the scheme. Local authorities provide it at swimming pools and leisure centres. We'll be launching a new scheme soon.

Improving sports facilities

During 2015 to 2016, we asked local authorities to bid for an interest-free loan of up to £1 million to provide new sports facilities. This was a pilot of the Sports Facilities Capital Loan Scheme. The successful authorities were Cardiff, Conwy and Wrexham.

In April 2019, in partnership with Sport Wales, we launched A Place for Sport. This is a new £1 million fund to create or improve sports facilities.