ukactive
Creating Safer Spaces: How Future Fit for Business supported ukactive and This Girl Can to continue creating safer spaces for women and girls
Creating Safer Spaces: How Future Fit for Business supported ukactive and This Girl Can to continue creating safer spaces for women and girls
Discover how Future Fit for Business supported ukactive and This Girl Can to create impactful e-learning modules that help staff build safer, more welcoming gyms and leisure spaces for women and girls.
To support the sector in continuing to create safer spaces for women and girls in fitness and leisure facilities, ukactive partnered with Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign to launch the Safer Spaces to Move initiative; a dedicated project designed to help women and girls to feel safer and more confident while being active in these spaces. Recognising the sector’s important role in ensuring women and girls feel confident and supported when being active, ukactive partnered with Future Fit for Business to transform safety training content into engaging, accessible e-learning modules.
Future Fit for Business provides all-encompassing learning and development solutions that empower organisations and their people to excel. With decades of experience and long-term partnerships — including Active Partnerships, leisure operators, and NHS Trusts – we drive progression through innovation, co-design, and dedicated support.
As part of the Future Fit Group, a leading provider of health and fitness education, we share a commitment to excellence and innovation across the sector. Our collaborative approach helps organisations upskill their workforce, strengthen engagement, and achieve measurable impact.
ukactive is the not-for-profit trade association for the UK’s physical activity sector, representing thousands of operators, suppliers and stakeholders committed to getting more people, more active, more often. With a mission to create a more active nation, ukactive champions the role of physical activity in improving health outcomes and building stronger communities across the UK.
Collaborating in partnership with Safer Spaces to Move and Women’s Aid on bespoke e-training modules was a true privilege. These courses provide crucial, up-to-date guidance on recognising and responding to sexual harassment, delivered digitally via our LMS, Flex, ensuring accessibility and consistency across the sector.
Hazel Goudie, Head of Teaching and Learning at Future Fit Training
The Safer Spaces to Move project was designed to help women and girls to feel safer and more confident while being active in gyms, fitness spaces and leisure facilities so they can reap all of the physical, social and mental benefits of an active lifestyle. In the most recent phase of this project, a set of foundational resources were developed to ensure that operators across the sector had the tools that they needed to effectively respond to any incidents of sexual harassment and intimidation, should they regrettably occur within any facility.
Through a thorough stakeholder engagement process with operators, guidance on foundational policies and procedures, alongside comprehensive staff training was created in order to best equip teams with the knowledge and confidence to detect and respond to any incidents of sexual harassment and intimidation. These resources were developed by the project partners in consultation with experts and representatives from across the physical activity sector. This included consultation and review with the Safer Spaces to Move Taskforce, a group comprised of individuals from all areas of the sector including public, private and independent operators.
To ensure the sector was best equipped with training that wasn’t just generic safeguarding content, but truly sector-specific, relevant, and impactful, Future Fit’s training modules were designed to best support operators and help to make a real difference to women’s experiences in any gym or fitness facility.
Through the Safer Spaces to Move project, we want to continue the journey of improvement and ensure all operators and their workforces feel empowered and supported to respond appropriately to any instances of sexual harassment and intimidation.
Hazel Goudie, Head of Teaching and Learner at Future Fit Training
Future Fit for Business was the delivery partner to transform expert-developed training content into interactive, engaging digital learning modules. Working closely with ukactive, This Girl Can, Women’s Aid (as the training content consultant), and the broader Safer Spaces to Move taskforce, Future Fit for Business created two comprehensive e-learning modules specifically focused on “Recognising & Responding to Sexual Harasment and Intimidation in Gym, Fitness and Leisure Facilities.”
Future Fit for Business worked directly with Women’s Aid’s training consultant and the Safer Spaces to Move project team to ensure the modules incorporated the most current and accurate information on recognising sexual harassment and intimidation, while embedding current best practice guidelines for workplace response.
The modules feature carefully crafted scenarios that reflect real situations that staff could encounter in gym, fitness and leisure environments. Through engaging videos and interactive elements, staff can learn to recognise various types of inappropriate behaviours and understand how to detect and respond to incidents in the safest and most effective way.
Understanding the diverse needs of operators across the sector, FFfB provided two distinct delivery methods:
The modules incorporate knowledge checks, engaging scenarios, and interactive elements to ensure learners can embed and apply their learning effectively, moving beyond passive consumption to active skill development.
Upon completion, participants receive certificates and CIMSPA (Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity) points, reinforcing the professional value of the training.
While the training modules launched recently (making comprehensive impact data not yet available), early indicators demonstrate strong sector engagement and recognition of the programme’s value.
The collaborative approach ensured broad sector buy-in from the outset, with comprehensive launch communications reaching operators through multiple touchpoints including newsletters to members, joint social media campaigns, member webinars, and network presentations.
With Future Fit’s help, the creation of training content with videos of various scenarios and engaging knowledge checks for learners is a valuable resource within this package of support. By completing the training, operators across the sector can embed and apply what they are learning in the best possible way and show their commitment to ensuring that every woman and girl feels confident and welcome using gyms and leisure centres.
Carolyn Thorsen, Project Manager - Safer Spaces to Move.
The Safer Spaces to Move project represents an ongoing commitment to support fitness and leisure facilities in continuing to create safer spaces for women and girls to be active. The staff training modules within this resource launch form a fundamental building block in the broader initiative, which will continue embedding resources throughout the sector to ensure all facilities have the tools in place to respond effectively to incidents should they occur.
For Future Fit for Business, our role in this project reinforces our leading position within the sector as a trusted partner capable of delivering quality, digital training solutions that meet the specific needs of our industry partners. As Hazel noted: “This reinforces Future Fit Training’s elevated positioning and growing opportunity within the sector when providing quality, digital training to suit the needs of our partners and the industry overall.”
The success of the Safer Spaces to Move training modules demonstrates how targeted, expert-developed e-learning can address critical industry challenges while building the confidence and capability of the workforce. By ensuring thousands of staff members can access this vital training digitally, with proof of completion certification, Future Fit for Business has helped create the foundation for safer, more inclusive fitness environments across the UK.
This case study highlights Future Fit for Business’s commitment to supporting our partners in creating meaningful change, because when the fitness industry succeeds in becoming more inclusive and accessible, we all move forward together.