About Active Forests

The Active Forests Programme (‘Active Forests’) aims to create a physical activity habit for life for visitors to the nation’s forests in England. The programme provides engaging, inspirational and motivating physical activity opportunities for new and existing forest visitors.  

The key principles of the programme are: 

• Activities are led by customer insight 
• Improving customers’ health and wellbeing by connection with the nation’s forests 
• Providing customers with a wide range of choices to help them develop and sustain a more physically active lifestyle 
• Customer provision through a network of providers 
• Robust and meaningful data collection, evaluation, and application of data 
• Continuous cross programme improvement

Funders and partners 

Active Forests is a long-term partnership funded by Forestry England and Sport England. Forest Research leads on monitoring and evaluation. 

• Forestry England grows, shapes and cares for the Nation’s forests and provides many opportunities for recreational activities that can contribute to physical health. 
• Sport England aims to transform lives and communities through sport and physical activity and in recent years has begun to work increasingly with the outdoor recreation sector. 
• Forest Research is Great Britain’s principal organisation for forestry and tree-related research. 

Active Forests delivery 

Active Forests has been running since 2014 and has involved several phases of delivery. The scope, approach and objectives of each phase differ, with later phases building on and going further than preceding phases. 

Sites included in Active Forests have a dedicated Active Forest Coordinator who organises a programme of events and regular activities tailored to the site and aiming to promote physical and mental wellbeing; these are delivered in partnership with a network of local providers.   

In the pilot phase, six sites were included: these were ‘destination sites’, larger in size and used by a mix of local residents and visitors who travel from further afield. Active Forest Coordinators were in post from year 2 of the pilot phase for five of these sites – one other site was included as a control and had no coordinator, nor were any Active Forest activities delivered there. Read more about the pilot phase and its evaluation here. 

Following the success of the pilot phase, phase 2 was developed; this included all those sites involved in the pilot phase. It started with 8 sites, increasing to 14 in the second year and 18 in the third year. As with the pilot phase, an Active Forest Coordinator was employed at each site and a range of organised events and regular physical activities were developed, delivered in partnership with a network of providers. Read more about phase 2 and its evaluation here.  

A social prescribing intervention was piloted at two sites during phase 2; these sites were also involved in the main part of phase 2 delivery. Read more about the social prescribing pilot and its evaluation here.  

A transition phase ran for a year following completion of phase 2 and prior to starting phase 3. This included 4 sites, all of which had been involved in phase 2. 

Phase 3 is called ‘Removing Barriers’ and is being delivered at a total of 20 sites. 16 of these are involved in delivering core activities, whilst 4 are focusing on social prescribing delivery; two of the latter sites have not previously been involved in Active Forests, however all of the remainder have been involved in at least one previous phase of delivery. Read more about phase 3 and its evaluation here.  

Monitoring and evaluation 

Forest Research leads on monitoring and evaluating Active Forests.  

A range of sources of data are collected to inform this, including: 

• Throughput data on the number of visits and information related to e.g. bike hire 
• Activity counters installed at selected sites 
• Participant surveys, available online or delivered in person by an Active Forest Coordinator 
• Focus groups and interviews 

Find out more about the research objectives and the monitoring and evaluation undertaken for each phase of the programme on the following pages: 

• Phase 1 (pilot)  
• Phase 2  
• Social prescribing pilot 
• Phase 3