I WOULD like to thank all the volunteers and the professional sport development officers who, over the past 12 months, have produced the Active York zone action plans.

The purpose of the action plans is to prioritise the sporting needs of the north, south, west and east of York and to help more people be more active by supporting volunteers, improving resources and promoting social inclusion and enterprise through sport.

The action plans are important because they will be used to:

guide the implementation of the Active York strategy for sport across the city

act as a mechanism to attempt to release resources for sport in York

inform planning issues in the city

shape sport-related policy in York and that of national, regional and local sport bodies

develop a city-wide sport strategy.

Partly as a result of this work, Active York has recently been recognised as a pilot community sports network and one of my first actions within this new framework was to hand copies of all four zone plans to Sport England.

York is now well positioned to take full advantage of the new single system for sport that Sport England is implementing.

The process of writing the zone action plans started in April when 120 people were invited to four zone conferences. From then until the submission of the plans on December 7, 40 people have worked in Action Groups to make things happen.

This generosity of spirit illustrates why sport is so important, not only to the health of the nation, but also its social fabric.

Professor Andy Smith,

Chairman of Active York,

York St John College,

Lord Mayor's Walk,

York.

Updated: 09:39 Saturday, January 21, 2006