Active Luton is a unique leisure trust in that we focus solely on one area, and have well-developed community outreach and health and wellbeing teams to target inactivity and encourage healthy lifestyles across Luton. Our health and wellbeing team is the healthy lifestyles partner in the new integrated wellness service for Luton, Total Wellbeing, in partnership with the national social enterprise Turning Point. The team delivers a wide range of health and wellbeing programmes for our nationally recognised Macmillan Move More cancer rehabilitation programme, a stroke rehabilitation programme and GP exercise and weight management referral programmes among many others.

Examples of our community initiatives include the award-winning ‘Me Time’ women’s activity programme which has engaged more than 5,000 women in getting active through targeted, community-based and culturally sensitive sessions. We were also involved in the Sport England programme of national swim pilots (one of 12 centres across the UK) and set up the ‘Your Pool’ brand to encourage people in Luton to swim more. Activities included free swim vouchers and ‘5 for £5’ incentive cards distributed across the entirety of Luton. The Your Pool initiative also saw the development of ‘innovation sessions’ in the shape of a new Hydra Rehabilitation programme to help people with disabilities or after physical trauma get active again.