Description
What Good Leadership Looks Like When Tackling Physical Activity Inequalities in a Place
1. Introduction
The Local Government Association (LGA), in partnership with Sport England, is seeking a suitably experienced supplier to produce a practice focused report / applied thought piece (approximately 15 pages) exploring what good local leadership looks like in practice when taking a place based, whole system approach to tackling physical activity inequalities.
The report should surface real world insights, examples and learning drawn from Place Partnerships, illustrating how leadership is enacted, distributed and sustained in different contexts.
Alongside supporting learning resources and sessions, the final outputs will be hosted on Sport England’s Leading the Movement (LtM) website. It will contribute to a wider suite of resources designed to support Sport England funded Place Partnerships to strengthen leadership capability and embed effective distributed and collective leadership approaches over time.
2. Purpose of the Commission
The commission aims to produce an applied, practice led exploration of leadership that:
Identifies what good place based leadership can look like in practice, not just in principle, when addressing physical activity inequalities.
• Surfaces insights, behaviours and patterns from across different Place contexts, including:
o Original/Existing (Deepening) Place Partnerships
o New (Expansion) Place Partnerships
o Place Universal Offer (PUO) areas
• Illustrates how distributed and collective leadership enables people in all roles - policy makers, practitioners, volunteers and communities - to meaningfully influence decisions that shape active lives.
• Supports leaders to reflect on and strengthen relational, collaborative and place specific leadership practices.
• Uses national evidence, local learning and lived experience to inform outputs.
• Generates practical insights, prompts and tools that leaders can adapt and apply in their own system contexts.
• Identifies how existing Sport England place based leadership support can be extended or enhanced to help Places embed this way of working more deeply over time.
3. Scope of Work
A. Practice Focused Report / Applied Thought Piece (circa 15 pages)
The report should combine insight, reflection and practical application, and explore:
• How distributed, collective and shared leadership shows up in day to day place based practice.
• How leadership practices can contribute to tackling inequalities, shifting power and enable behaviour change.
• Learning that is transferable across roles, including system leaders, senior managers and other place based practitioners.
• Examples of leadership in action, such as shared decision making, co production, collective problem solving and cross sector collaboration.
• How leadership approaches adapt to local identity, assets, culture, geography and challenge.
• Reflections on what additional practical support, tools or resources could build on the two day Sport England Place based Leadership Programme and support Places to sustain this work.
• Case led insights highlighting where Place Partnerships have deepened leadership practice locally, outlining what was done, what shifted and what was learned.
Keen for the tone to be accessible, reflective and grounded, supporting leaders to make sense of their own practice rather than prescribing a single model.
B. Applied Case Studies (short, practical and high impact)
Each case study should illustrate leadership “in action”, for example:
• Collaborative governance and cross organisation decision making
• Inclusive, community led or co produced leadership
• Enabling conditions and partner behaviours that support local change to address inequalities
• Distributed leadership practices (e.g. shared governance, co-design, collective problem-solving).
• Leadership actions that build relationships, use insight, respond to local context and position physical activity as a wellbeing and prevention priority.
• Highlighting change is important i.e. the case studies could be framed around ‘how things were, how they are now, and what caused this to happen’
C. Connection with NELP
The supplier is expected to work with Sport England’s National Evaluation and Learning Partnership (NELP) to:
• Engage with NELP Leadership Condition colleagues and relevant resources.
• Identify examples of leadership behaviours and enabling conditions based on NELP insights and outputs
• Integrating these examples into the applied thought piece, case studies and supporting resources,
• Ensure outputs are grounded in lived experience and real practice.
This collaboration is essential to inform the final outputs, support alignment and avoid duplication
D. Socialisation and Use of Assets
The supplier will support the socialisation and use of assets through:
• Hosting and delivering a sense making session for LGA, Sport England and NELP colleagues, focused on key insights, learning and implications from the applied thought piece.
• Hosting and delivering two recorded sense making sessions for Place Partnerships, designed to:
o Raise awareness of the outputs,
o Prompt discussion and reflection, and
o Encourage practical use of the insights, examples and tools in local work.
o This could also involve Place Partners speaking to their practical examples
• Producing and sharing accompanying slide decks that summarise key insights, learning and reflective prompts.
Sessions should be interactive and practitioner focused, rather than purely presentational.
4. Optional Supporting Outputs
Suppliers may propose additional short, practical resources, such as:
• A two-page executive summary.
• A visual or infographic model of “what good leadership looks like”.
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Suppliers are encouraged to be creative and propose outputs that add value, especially on the socialisation, accessibility and practical use of assets.
5. Deliverables
The supplier will be expected to provide:
1. A practice-focused report / applied thought piece (approximately 15 pages), including reflective insight and practical recommendations for further action
2. Four to five applied case studies, either standalone or embedded within the report, illustrating leadership in practice.
3. A minimum of three facilitated sense making sessions for LGA, Sport England and Place Partnership colleagues.
4. Any agreed supporting resources, to be confirmed at inception.
5. Participation in inception, check-in and review meetings to support alignment, quality and timely delivery.
6. All outputs/ resources must comply to the Leading the Movement brand guidelines and accessibility requirements
6. Timeline
Project Completion date: 30th September 2026
Milestones agreed at inception.
Indicative timeline:
• Week 1: Inception meeting
• Week 3: Outline/structure
• Week 9: First draft
• Week 12: Final version
• Week 13: Optional resources
7. Background: Leading the Movement
This work sits within Sport England’s Leading the Movement programme, which aims to build a confident, connected, and skilled community of leaders capable of driving long term systemic change and tackling inequalities in sport and physical activity.
Read more about the Vision, Mission and Aims of Leading the Movement
8. Budget
Total budget: £18,000 + VAT
The budget should cover all research, engagement, drafting, design, sense making activity, meetings and revisions. This is the budget cap. Bidders are required to bid competitively, but realistically, showing a full cost breakdown within the bid.
9. Supplier Requirements
Applicants must demonstrate:
• Strong experience in the sport and physical activity system
• Understanding of place based working, systems change and Sport England’s Place Partnership approach
• Awareness of Sport England wider leadership support offer (i.e. Leading the Movement programme) and the relevant E&L resources that position leadership as a key condition for change when tackling addressing inequalities in physical activity
• Expertise in leadership development, systems leadership or organisational development.
• Experience working at strategic leadership and/or community leadership levels.
• Ability to synthesise complex insights into high-quality written outputs.
• An appropriate level of independence and objectivity.
10. Application Process
Applicants must submit:
• CV
• Cover letter (max 4-5 pages) outlining:
o Relevant experience
o Understanding of the commission
o Proposed approach and methodology, including how your approach and policy support diversity, equity and inclusion
o Suggested optional outputs
o Proposed timeline
• Examples of previous relevant work
Bid submission deadline: 9am, Friday 26th June 2026