Greater Manchester Activity Levels May 20-21: Walking

The latest Active Lives data, May 2020-21, has found that 48.8% of adults in Greater Manchester took part in walking for leisure, 20.4% took part in walking for travel and 58.6% took part in all walking. In the past year there have been some noticeable changes in each of these rates with walking for leisure seeing an increase (+8.3%), and all walking ​and (+1.9%), but walking for travel has seen decline in participation in the past 12 months (-10.2%).

Borough Walking Rates

The all walking rates across Greater Manchester vary from 55.0% in Manchester to 68.4% in Bury, this represents a gap of 13.4% 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 (40.7%), Bury once more has the highest participation rate (58.4%).

Walking for travel sees the lowest participation rates overall with a 11.6% gap between the borough with the highest rates of participation, Manchester (26.4%), and the borough with the lowest levels of participation, Wigan (14.8%).

Published February 2022