Health & fitness

The health and fitness industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK economy. Not only is there rapid growth within the private sector, but the government is increasingly relying on the industry to help it deliver on public health and activity targets in the fight against illness and obesity. It is crucial that the industry’s skilled workforce can keep pace with this growth.

Consequently, there is an increasing demand for skilled exercise professionals to fill the growing employment vacancies, to implement new initiatives and cater for the growing number of fitness club and leisure centre users.

“The ongoing success of our business is dependent upon the quality, professionalism and friendliness of our employees. SkillsActive is a vital tool in helping us harness their potential.”
Harm Tegelaars, former Cannons Group Ltd, President of European Health and Fitness Association

Our role

SkillsActive works across the UK to help achieve the government’s and devolved administration’s objective of a healthier, fitter nation. As a result of inactivity, obesity-related diseases are becoming more and more frequent throughout the UK’s population.

We work with health and fitness professionals across the UK to ensure the workforce is appropriately skilled and qualified. This includes working with higher and further education to develop qualification frameworks for new qualifications to ensure our graduates leave college or university with industry recognised qualifications, as well as developing national occupational standards for the health and fitness sector that underpin qualifications.

We lead a technical expert group for the sector that, amongst other things, approves the endorsement of courses for entry onto the Register of Exercise Professionals.

Examples of SkillsActive’s work with the health and fitness industry:

• Launch of the Register of Exercise Professionals (through its predecessor SPRITO), putting exercise and fitness instructors, teachers and trainers on a formal footing by helping to safeguard and promote the health and interests of their clients;
• Development of a new ‘learning hub’ in Northern Ireland, with fitness industry employers pooling their resources to find the best training opportunities for their staff;
• Development of national standards for exercise referrals from GPs and approval of courses given the category of exercise referral on the Register of Exercise Professionals.

Click here to watch a video explaining the importance of skills and training to the health and fitness sector.

Key facts and figures

• The sector had a GVA output equalling £650 million in 2004, it created 7.5% of total active leisure and learning output, and 0.1% of whole UK economy output.
• Subscriptions for health and fitness in the UK totalled £1.8 billion in 2003.
• 9 in 10 fitness professionals are very likely or quite likely to still be in the sector in 2008.
• More than 1 in 5 workers in the sector feel that they have not been given adequate training to do their job.

Training, education and qualifications

To access national occupation standards, information on foundation degrees and other qualifications for the sector, click here.

At Leisure Industry Week 2007 SkillsActive hosted a Training Providers Forum to provide a detailed update on current and future developments which will affect qualifications and training providers across the health and fitness industry. An overview of discussions and issues raised is available here.