Britons are inactive – but they have leapfrogged one rival, say WHO figures

One in five Britons is not doing enough exercise, a landmark international report has found, but the UK is now more active than Australia. 

A total of 19 per cent of adults in the UK were deemed to be insufficiently active in 2022, a figure that has almost halved from 37.5 per cent in 2000.

However, Australia has had one in four people inactive consistently since 2000.

Adults need 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, to be healthy, experts have said.

Moderate activity includes a brisk walk, riding a bike or gardening while vigorous activity includes running, lifting weights or swimming.

‘Lost opportunity’

The World Health Organisation (WHO) ran a global study and found that around three in 10 people (31.3 per cent) worldwide are not active enough, which is around 1.8 billion people.

Data show there are around 10.5 million people in the UK not doing enough exercise, but projections show the UK is on course to have just 13.7 per cent of adults inactive by 2030.

Men are slightly more active than women, with 18.2 and 19.7 per cent inactivity, respectively, data show.

Physical inactivity is still more common among women globally compared with men, the WHO found, with inactivity rates of 34 per cent for the former compared to 29 per cent for the latter.

The UK, however, is bucking the trend when it comes to improving activity levels as the global level of inactivity has increased by five percentage points since 2010, according to the study published in The Lancet Global Health.

The UK ranked 60th out of 197 countries for activity, and beat the US where more than a third (33.7 per cent) of adults do not do enough exercise.

However, Estonia, Latvia and the Netherlands scored better than the UK’s 19 per cent, which was the same as Switzerland, Indonesia and Slovenia.

The most active region was Niue, a Polynesian Island, with just 7.4 per cent inactivity, and the least active was the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has almost two thirds of its adult population not meeting the activity criteria.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said: “These new findings highlight a lost opportunity to reduce cancer, heart disease and improve mental well-being through increased physical activity.

“We must renew our commitments to increasing levels of physical activity and prioritise bold action, including strengthened policies and increased funding, to reverse this trend.”

Dr Rüdiger Krech, the director of health promotion at WHO, said: “Physical inactivity is a silent threat to global health, contributing significantly to the burden of chronic diseases.”

Huw Edwards, the chief executive of ukactive, the UK’s trade body for the exercise sector, said: “These figures should sound the alarm bell for nations around the world and we need to see more urgent action from the next Government to address physical inactivity in the UK.”