Greater Manchester Activity Levels Nov 19-20: Walking

The latest Active Lives data, November 2019-20,  has found that 43.1% of adults in Greater Manchester took part in walking for leisure, 23.7% took part in walking for travel and 54.9% took part in all walking. In the past year there have been noticeable changes in each of these rates with walking for leisure being the only walking category to see an increase (+2.6%), walking for travel and all walking have both seen declines in participation in the past 12 months (-10.2% and -4.9% respectively).

Borough Walking Rates

The all walking rates across Greater Manchester vary from 51.2% in Manchester to 61.0% in Bury, this represents a gap of 9.8% between the areas of lowest and highest walking. Overall just two boroughs, Bury and Stockport see more than six in ten adults walking at least twice in the preceding month, when we break all walking down into walking for leisure and walking for travel we see both these areas with high rates of participation in the sub groups as well.

Walking for leisure rates are lowest in Manchester (34.8%) and is almost 10% lower than the Greater Manchester average, Bury once more has the highest participation rate (50.9%).

Walking for travel sees the lowest participation rates overall with a 10.4% gap between the borough with the highest rates of participation, Manchester (28.0%), and the borough with the lowest levels of participation, Wigan (17.6%).

Published September 2021