CIMSPA responds to the Prime Minister’s lockdown roadmap for England
CIMSPA CEO, Tara Dillon, has responded to the Prime Minister’s announcement setting out a roadmap for the relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions in England.
“The Government is understandably taking a cautious approach to opening things up and is rightly prioritising getting children back into schools on 8 March.
As we emerge from lockdown, sport and physical activity will be critical in helping the nation to stay physically and mentally healthy, and we are pleased to see priority being given to indoor and outdoor activity.
Our professional workforce is ready to play its part in getting the nation back on its feet, in a Covid-secure environment and we will continue to work with our partners including DCMS, Sport England, ukactive and EMD (UK) to get clarity on the detail of these relaxations for our members and the wider sector.
Outdoor sport and activity carries a very low risk of transmission and we welcome the planned relaxation on the numbers for outdoor exercise from 29 March. This will enable more of our highly trained workforce to get back to work, supporting more customers. If the data continues to be encouraging, we would like to see these outdoor restrictions quickly reduced further, to enable larger group exercise and team sport to take place.
We welcome the planned reopening of indoor gyms, pools and leisure facilities from 12 April. These are vital services for millions of people and throughout last year, thanks to the professionalism of the workforce, these facilities were shown to have extremely low levels of Covid-19 transmission.
We are especially keen to ensure that group exercise is allowed to restart as soon as possible. This is a major part of the sector, employing many thousands of qualified professionals, many of them self-employed or freelance workers. It is an extremely popular form of exercise for women and older age groups: almost 5m people normally take part in group exercise every week in the UK, with 78% being female and 35% aged over 55.
Despite today’s positive news, there is still a need for financial support for businesses in the sector, and for many thousands of self-employed professionals who have suffered extreme financial hardship over the last year, but have missed out on support. We will continue to push for this support to be made available in next week’s Budget.”
As lockdown restrictions begin to be lifted across the UK, CIMSPA will keep the sector up to date with what the latest guidance means for the workforce.