Active practice Charter

It's free to join and we have lots of simple and creative ideas to help you meet the criteria. This can be done as individual practice or as part of a primary care network (PCN). You just need to demonstrate that your practice/network has:

• taken steps to reduce sedentary behaviour and increase physical activity in staff and patients, and
• partnered with a local physical activity provider

Being an Active Practice can have a huge impact on the health of everyone connected to your practice. Being active is proven to reduce the risk of premature death, reduce social isolation and improve immunity to flu and COVID-19, among other illnesses.

Physical inactivity is one of the major modifiable risk factors for preventable early death, but GPs and their teams haven’t always felt empowered to encourage their patients to move more. Because of the growing epidemic of chronic lifestyle-related disease, mental health disease and social isolation, it's time to act – and lots of GP teams are! Even modest changes to activity levels can play an important role in improving mental and physical wellbeing for all of us.

The Active Practice Charter is a fun, easy way to make some simple but impactful changes in your workplace that will demonstrate to your patients and staff that you mean it when you say that movement is the best medicine.

Despite the unprecedented challenges in primary care since its launch, the team have been wowed by the uptake of the Charter nationally, with hundreds of practices joining the network of Active Practices – inspiring us, and other practices, with their creativity and innovation to meet and exceed the criteria.

Achieving the RCGP Active Practice Charter is something to be celebrated, and shared widely with staff, patients, and the wider community. It's a great example of social prescribing ‘in action’, and an excellent case study of your practice excellence when CQC come knocking. What are you waiting for?

How to become an Active Practice

Becoming an Active Practice is simple - all you need to do is sign up and demonstrate you have taken steps in the practice to:

• Reduce sedentary behaviour in staff;
• Reduce sedentary behaviour in patient;
• Increase physical activity in staff;
• Increase physical activity in patients;
• Partner with a local physical activity provider

Just like training for a race, the first steps are often the hardest – but practices which have embraced this approach have found that the benefits in terms of staff morale, patient health and engagement more than make up for the initial effort.

This initiative does not have to be led by a GP partner, or even a doctor – you may have a member of your non-clinical practice team who would be best placed to lead the initiative. Medical students, GP trainees, your social prescriber, first contact physiotherapist, a receptionist or one of the PPG team – anyone can lead!

We have listened to feedback and made the process even easier with our new online form to submit applications.

If you are unsure if your practice is ready to sign up for the charter, need extra support, or maybe some funding for activities or resources there is help. We have designed a quick checklist/questionnaire to help you sign up for the charter and complete each section. Click on a section and follow the instructions. Checklist