King's receives over £240,000 from Sport England

The funding will enable the launch of the BeActive programme, a scheme jointly supported by King’s College London and King’s College London Students’ Union (KCLSU) through their partnership King’s Sport, and which will offer over 30 different activity sessions across primary campuses in order to encourage more people to take up sport.

Andy Allford, Head of Sport, Health and Wellbeing at the university, said: “The Lottery funding, coupled with some match funding from the University and KCLSU means we can provide a sporting offer that appeals to a wider range of our King’s student community, through our partnership delivery arm – King’s Sport. Traditionally we haven’t been able to cater for students who want to try new sports, keep active or simply play recreationally as much as we would like to, so this new funding will allow us to offer a program that fulfils that gap!”

“This project will help us deliver our vision to encourage a healthy lifestyle by delivering outstanding opportunities and experiences to improve personal performance and achievement to the University community”

Liam Jackson, KCLSU Vice President for Student Activities and Facilities enthused: “Thanks to the generous support of Sport England more King’s students than ever before will be able to realise the benefits of sport for general health and wellbeing. University sport isn’t just for elite sportspeople or those who want to play competitively. It’s for everyone who wants to take part – be it to try something new, get fit, socialise or all three! I can’t wait to see the BeActive Programme get underway and grow our sporting community”.

Currently just over half (52 per cent) of higher education students take part in sport at least once a week. The Sport England’s University Sport Activation Fund supports projects that seek to not only maintain this level of participation but also increase it by trialling new methods of getting students into sport and offering a wider variety of opportunities to keep playing sport whilst at university. Across the College the BeActive programme will provide opportunities for students throughout the academic year to get into and learn new sports thanks to a large number and variety of events, inter-mural competitions, taster and coached sessions.

Sport England Director of Community Sport, Mike Diaper, said: “We know universities play a vital role in maintaining and growing a student’s love of sport. They can encourage them to continue playing once they’ve left school or help those less sporty discover a new sport. By investing in King’s College London we’re helping students develop a lifelong sporting habit while they study.”

The latest funding for university sport builds on Sport England’s highly successful three year ‘Active Universities’ programme which delivered a 2 per cent rise in the number of students playing sport regularly through 41 university projects previously invested in.

At King’s, the new funding follows in the success of earlier Sport England Sportivate funding awarded in 2011/12 to KCLSU to develop projects in basketball, boxing and netball. Recent years have also seen the Get Active pilot offer recreational activity across up to 10 sports. Today’s £242,853 award however, and the development of the BeActive programme enables much greater, accessible and regular sporting activity to be offered to and enjoyed by all students in the near future.

More information to follow shortly - For the latest updates be sure to follow @Team_KingsSport or King's Sport.