Open to all gyms, fitness and leisure facilities in the UK until the end of September, the consultation asks for details of the measures that have been implemented to cater for disabled people and facilitate their participation – with the findings and recommendations set to be published in December.

The work forms part of ukactive’s Everyone Can agenda, which is supported by Sport England, and aims to help remove the barriers to physical activity for disabled people by ensuring that fitness and leisure operators are supported to continue to improve access to their services.

The consultation from ukactive will build on the findings of its Everyone Can report, commissioned by Sport England, which focused on the physical activity landscape for disabled people with a leisure sector focus.

Specific areas have been identified as key themes for improvement including: upskilling the workforce; enhancing levels of customer service and engaging better with disabled people; providing more information to customers; communicating that gyms and leisure centres are open to all; and beginning to capture and report on usage levels and experiences of disabled people.

Designed in collaboration with disabled people and  partners across the disability sector, Everyone Can will lead to the publication of clear, implementable and practical measures for fitness and leisure operators to build upon their existing offer for disabled people.

Disabled people account for one in five of the UK’s population and were some of the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown restriction.

Prior to the pandemic, the gap in activity levels was beginning to close, however, disabled people are still twice as likely as non-disabled people to be inactive. The Activity Alliance 2021 Annual Survey showed that twice as many disabled people felt that coronavirus greatly reduced their ability to do sport or physical activity (27 per cent) compared to non-disabled people (13 per cent). The survey showed disabled people are some of the least active, despite great demand and intent to do more.