Case Study – GM Moving
Organisation name: GM Moving
Contact name: Beth Sutcliffe
Role / job title: Strategic Director
Synopsis:
Place Partnerships – Our mission is to enable active lives for all by reducing inactivity and health inequalities. Through a place-based, collaborative approach that brings together people, communities, and organisations to create sustainable solutions to inactivity. By supporting people and building on the unique strengths of each place, we aim to break down barriers and create opportunities for everyone to live healthy, active lives.
The Story:
The challenge
We know that place matters. Where we are born, live, work and play profoundly shapes our opportunities to live healthy, active lives. Nearly 1 in 3 (28%) of Greater Manchester residents are active for less than 30 minutes a week, missing out of a range of benefits to their physical and mental health. There are stark and stubborn inequalities in activity data too with an 11-percentage point difference in inactivity rates between our most active borough (24% inactive) and least active borough (35% inactive), in the latest Sport England data. Our place-based, collaborative approach addresses the deep-rooted inequalities and systemic barriers that determine who can move, be active, and thrive so everyone has the opportunity to live a healthy, active life.
What was done
Place-based working is an approach that starts with the people and the place – not with a one-size-fits-all programme. It means designing ways to help people be more active that truly fit the local community: its needs, its strengths, and its surroundings.
Instead of simply delivering a service, place-based working looks at the whole system – from local parks and pavements to schools, community groups and council services. It brings together local people and organisations to work as partners and make decisions together
Impact and outcomes
What changed as a result?
This can include wellbeing outcomes, participation, system impact, learning or early indicators.
Data is welcome where available, but not essential.
Counting what matters – We measure impact through the Five Enablers of Change
An example in action
In Brinnington, Life Leisure and Age UK Stockport developed the Confidence Walks based on conversations with local residents. When delivering outdoor walks, people shared the challenges they faced in getting active – things like poor weather, long distances, a lack of benches, uneven paths, and inaccessible routes. Most of all, it became clear that confidence was a key barrier.
To overcome this, the Confidence Walks were designed with safety, accessibility, and reassurance in mind. Held indoors in a sports hall in the centre of their community, the walks are set up with chairs in the centre so people can rest at any time. The smooth, flat surface creates a more comfortable environment for those with low mobility, low confidence, or concerns about walking outdoors. It’s a simple but powerful example of listening to the community and shaping a solution around their real needs.
Learning and Relevance
Why this matters
Across Greater Manchester, our communities told us that that they didn’t want to be “done to” but, wanted to share their local knowledge and work together to create solutions that built on the strengths of their communities.
We often saw that short-term, top-down, interventions didn’t work or only engaged those that were already likely to be active. By focusing on the deficits of a place, we overlooked community strengths, damaging relationships and failing to address the root causes and barriers of inactivity. When these programs ended, the same barriers remained, and communities were left frustrated when little had changed.
We also noticed that when these interventions did work, we would try to copy successful projects from one place to another. We assumed that if something worked in one community, it would work everywhere. But this failed to acknowledge that every community is different and reflect on the what the unique conditions, or strengths, that made it successful in the first place. When this approach didn’t work, we would dismiss the idea instead of reflecting on why it had not worked and what we could do differently next time.
It became clear that we needed to try something different.
What would you do differently next time?
Reflections from Nicole Nicole McKeating-Jones, Strategic Lead – Place Partnerships
What we heard: key themes across our places
- Sport can be a key catalyst
Across places, there’s a strong desire to work more closely with sport, particularly grassroots clubs and national governing bodies. Grassroots clubs often sit at the heart of communities, with trusted relationships and, in some cases, physical assets.
- Integrating with Live Well
We heard a clear appetite to support the Greater Manchester Live Well agenda, which shares many of the same principles as our Place Partnership work: community-led, prevention-focused and rooted in place. At the same time, levels of alignment vary, with some places already well connected and others finding it harder to keep pace with a fast-moving system agenda.
- The VCFSE sector is a critical catalyst for this work
A strong theme was the deepening of relationships with VCFSE organisations and local infrastructure partners. These organisations often hold the trust, insight, and flexibility needed to engage communities in ways statutory systems can’t always do alone.
- Learning and evaluation is becoming part of the system
Most places reflected on the value of developing a local Theory of Change as part of the 2025–2028 phase of the approach. While time-intensive, it’s helped clarify purpose, roles, and direction. Alongside this, learning and evaluation approaches like Ripple Effects Mapping are increasingly being embedded across partners.
- Being loud and proud about our work
Another theme that came through strongly is that we need to get better at talking about the impact of the work.
Across Greater Manchester, our place teams and their networks are making real progress – shifting relationships, changing how systems respond and creating the conditions that make active lives for all a reality. Yet many of our teams describe this as ‘just doing their job’. There’s a humility there that I value, but it means we miss the opportunity to show what’s possible when you work alongside communities to change the systems around them.