As part of efforts to prevent 37,000 needless deaths a year, ukactive is spearheading a new campaign to ‘turn the tide of inactivity’ in the UK – with the scale of the challenge laid bare in a report of the same name.

The wording is intentional: rather than concentrating on obesity as has been the case across society in recent years, the focus is on getting people more active. Launched at the ukactive summit In November, the initiative has got off to a strong start, with government, business and the NHS backing the scheme. There has even been an acknowledgment from Prime Minister David Cameron. 

If the campaign reaches its target of reducing inactivity by 1 per cent every year for the next five years, the project could save tens of thousands of lives and save taxpayers £1.2bn – a tax reduction of £44 per household.

ukactive has set a course to ensure that a cross-party, cross-government national strategy on inactivity will be embedded within the 2015 election manifesto of all parties. It has also called for councils to set health and wellbeing strategies where success is measured by reducing levels of inactivity rather than obesity – an important point, as a recent ukactive report showed that councils only spend 2.4 per cent of their health budgets on getting people more active. 

But how is the programme different from other, similar initiatives in the past? We ask three leading industry figures for their views.