Beat the Streets launches in five more locations this spring
Founded by Dr William Bird, it turns every journey into a game
Offering free participation, it has been proven to engage individuals from the most deprived communities
In 2025, social value was calculated at £321.80 per adult
Beat the Streets has announced plans to launch in a number of new towns this spring.
Bloxwich launched in February and will be followed by Colchester on 11 March. Hendon and Grangetown; Penzance and St Austell will all launch later this month.
Beat the Streets turns towns and cities into a giant game with friendly competition to see how far an individual or their team can walk, run or cycle around their community, turning every journey into a game.
First introduced near Reading in 2013, it has now reached two million adults and children in more than 200 places across the world.
It was the brainchild of Dr William Bird, who founded Intelligent Health in 2010 to create a world where every community is designed for health, and every individual has the agency and the environment to flourish.
An analysis of nine programmes in 2024/25 showed that 40 per cent of registered participants came from the 20 per cent most deprived communities. Children from the most deprived areas (IMD 1–2), demonstrated a 7 per cent reduction in the proportion classified as less active and the rate of children achieving more than 60 minutes of daily activity increased by 8.4 percentage points.
On average, programmes engage 12 per cent of the population and 68 per cent of adult players were women.
The social value was calculated at £321.80 per adult participant and extrapolated to 54,365 adult players this generated an estimated wellbeing value of around £17.5 million.
The game is free for all players and for partners purchasing the programme for their area, the average cost to engage a participant was £12.73 in 2024/25.
Discussion about this post