Oxford has the highest increase in sporting participation in the South East — but there is still a lot more work to do.

That is the view of the Oxfordshire Sports Partnership after a Sport England survey found 25.2 per cent of the city’s adults take part in 30 minutes’ moderate exercise three days a week.

The statistics, which are part of the Active People 2007/08 survey, show the figure had risen by 4.7 per cent since research was last carried out in 2005.

In Oxfordshire, the percentage has risen from 23.2 to 26.7 in the same period.

OSP, which was launched in 2005, is made up of the county’s five local authorities, Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust, leisure contractors, schools and national sport governing bodies.

Chris Freeman, the partnership’s managing director, said: “I’m thrilled with the results for Oxfordshire. It is proof that participation in sport and active recreation is definitely moving in the right direction and working in partnership seems to be having a very positive impact.”

But Rich Beer, sports development manager at OSP, added: “There is still more work to be done.

“If you compare sport participation in England with other nations, particularly those in northern Europe, we are still a long way down.

“In places like Sweden the participation is up towards 50 per cent.

“This month we will be launching a big project called Go Active, which is aimed at getting more adults into sport. It’s a £1.5m project over three years and we aim to help find a sport to suit them.

“Many people don’t know where or how to do it and that’s what we will be looking at.

“We will also be teaming up with the primary care trust, because the benefits of preventative health care are huge.

“If we are to fight off this obesity time bomb it needs to be done.”

At Oxsrad, an activity venue in Marston promoting sport for all, acting centre manager Paul Saxton said: “We’ve seen an increase in our gym users even though everyone’s talking about the recession.

“That proves that people are still planning on getting healthy.

“We have also seen a massive increase with our number of kids.

“We’ve been running a community sports club on Wednesday evenings and we expected 20 kids on the first night — we got 62.

“This news is a step in the right direction, but the obesity thing is quite a scary prospect and there is still more people could do.”

The Active People survey was carried out by Ipsos Mori on behalf of Sport England between October 2007 and October 2008.

It interviewed 191,100 adults by telephone and a minimum of 500 adults were questioned in each local authority.

David Hunt, assistant manager at Barton Pool, in Waynflete Road, said an Oxford City Council scheme to give free swimming to over-60s and under-17s had helped increase visitor numbers.

He said: “The number of people using our pool has increased by a quite significant amount from the year before.

“It’s all down to free swimming for kids and more awareness among all different types of groups.

“The free swimming for children is a good thing and it’s getting more people involved, which is what the Government wants.”

tairs@oxfordmail.co.uk