ukactive has won the Trade Body Campaign of the Year award for its Turning the tide of inactivity campaign at the Public Affairs Awards 2014.

The report was something of a game changer, defining physical inactivity as a major national public health issue, linked to one in six premature deaths. It has already garnered a huge amount of support across government, sector, brands and private enterprise.

In the report published in January, ukactive said that increasing physical activity levels by one per cent a year would save the UK economy £1.2bn over the next five years. However, it added, local authorities had still not fully appreciated the public health risk of inactivity and were spending far less on tackling it than they do sexual health or smoking cessation.

Happily, local authorities appear to have taken note. In ukactive’s follow up report released last month – Steps to solving inactivity – the trade body found that 70 per cent of councils had raised their allocated spending on tackling inactivity from two per cent of the public health grant to four per cent in 2014/5.

The follow-up report also called for more robust evaluation of physical activity programmes so that the most effective can be commissioned and replicated at scale, with demonstrable impact.

ukactive CEO David Stalker said: “The endorsement of decision makers who recognise excellence in advocacy communications and public affairs is great recognition of the hard work put into this robust report.”