Residents in north Oxfordshire will have a spring in their step with the announcement of a package of health and wellbeing initiatives to keep their positive New Year intentions alive.
Published: Monday, 6th March 2023
Cherwell District Council is inviting people to explore their local area with the help of its wayfinding and mapping projects, while its targeted activity programmes for specific groups and its leisure centres continue to go from strength to strength.
Councillor Phil Chapman, Portfolio Holder for Healthy Communities, said: “Springtime is often thought of as when we wave goodbye to wishful plans for the new year but we’re encouraging people to spring into action as the days start to get longer.
“There are so many fantastic leisure offers in our area, designed to transform our new year’s resolutions into long-term healthy habits.
“It’s the perfect time to explore some of the fun trails and beautiful country walks we have created around the district, from the Bicester heritage walk to the Kidlington explorer routes or our Go Jauntly app.
“We also offer some very successful targeted programmes: people with long term health conditions can get tailored activity plans through Move Together, and we’re enabling parents and kids to enjoy sports and games together through our You Move offer, which can be found at www.cherwell.gov.uk/MoveTogether
“Meanwhile our leisure centres are having a very successful start to the year with really high footfall and swimming classes which are seeing more attendees than ever before.
“We are also continuing to invest in our leisure provision, with improvements on their way at Woodgreen swimming pool and work happening on additional funding for activities at local schools.
“We’ll be encouraging people to #SpringIntoAction in the coming weeks so we encourage people to follow us on social media for regular reminders of some of the fantastic ways of increasing your activity levels in the district this springtime.”
Recent data shows how well received the council’s leisure offer is. At Spiceball leisure centre in Banbury, January saw its fourth busiest month on record, while swimming classes have seen record attendance.
At both Spiceball and Kidlington and Gosford leisure centres, visitor figures have officially returned to pre-pandemic levels. Further information on the four Cherwell leisure centres can be accessed at www.cherwell.gov.uk/leisure-centres
The Move Together programme now has 820 registered participants, all of whom get tailored activity programmes to help them increase their physical activity. 74 per cent of participants say their activity levels have increased.