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Gera Active Life Score — Methodology

Full, reproducible formula behind GALS/100. Every number traces to a real Sport England Active Lives XLSX download. No modelling or extrapolation.

Formula

raw  = activePct − inactivePct + 0.5 × fairlyActivePct

GALS = round( (raw − rawMin) / (rawMax − rawMin) × 100 )
       clamped to [0, 100]

where:
  activePct       = % adults (16+) active (150+ min/week)
  fairlyActivePct = % adults (16+) fairly active (30–149 min/week)
  inactivePct     = % adults (16+) inactive (<30 min/week)
  rawMin, rawMax  = min/max raw scores across all 317 English LAs
                    in the same survey year

England benchmark (November 2024–November 2025)

MetricEngland
Active (150+ min/week)64.5%
Fairly active (30–149 min/week)10.7%
Inactive (<30 min/week)24.7%
England GALS (benchmark)56 / 100
Local authorities included317

Data source

Source: Sport England Active Lives Adult Survey — data tables (Table 3: Levels Local Authority)

Reference period: November 2024–November 2025

Published: April 2026

Coverage: England, 317 local authorities

Population: Adults aged 16+ (aggregated survey estimates)

Download method: Public XLSX file, no login or API key required. Gera fetches the file and parses Table 3 directly.

Small-area data and suppression

Sport England's Active Lives small-area estimates at MSOA level are subject to statistical suppression where sample sizes are too small to produce reliable estimates. Where MSOA-level figures are suppressed, Gera falls back to the parent local-authority figure and renders an “insufficient data” notice rather than showing a fabricated or interpolated value. Local-authority-level data (used on this cluster) is not suppressed.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the data come from?
The Gera Active Life Score uses Sport England Active Lives Adult Survey data, Table 3 (Levels Local Authority), downloaded directly from the Sport England data-tables page as a no-login XLSX file. The file is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The November 2024–November 2025 edition was released in April 2026.
How is the GALS computed?
For each local authority: raw = activePct − inactivePct + 0.5 × fairlyActivePct, where all values are percentages from the Sport England data. GALS = round((raw − rawMin) / (rawMax − rawMin) × 100), capped to 0–100. rawMin and rawMax are the minimum and maximum raw scores across all 317 English LAs in the same survey year, so GALS is a relative ranking.
Why add 0.5 × fairlyActivePct?
Sport England defines "fairly active" as 30–149 minutes/week (half the 150-minute threshold for "active"). Weighting it at 0.5 gives credit for partial activity without double-counting it against the 150+ threshold. The weight is transparent and reproducible from the public source data.
Why is GALS a relative (normalised) score?
Normalising to 0–100 across all English LAs makes it immediately comparable — a score of 100 means the most active LA in England; 0 means the least active. It also means the scale is consistent across years (each year's rawMin/rawMax is re-calibrated from the current data).
When is this data updated?
Sport England publishes the Active Lives Adult Survey annually. Gera updates the GALS index with each new release. The current edition covers November 2024–November 2025 (released April 2026). The dateModified in the Dataset JSON-LD is 2026-06-20.

Explore the data

Contains public sector information published by Sport England and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Sport England — Active Lives Adult Survey (Table 3 Levels Local Authority) (November 2024–November 2025, published April 2026).