Nearly a third of people in Herefordshire fail to walk for 10 consecutive minutes a week, according to the Department for Transport.

Public Health England has encouraged adults to walk for at least 10 minutes a day, but 30% of people in the area don’t manage one 10 minute walk a week. Across England the rate is 31%.

The annual Active Lives survey, which ran from November 2016 to November 2017, asked a random sample of 692 adults over the age of 16 in Herefordshire how active they had been in the past four weeks.

Sport England, which conducted the survey, aims to help get everyone in England to feel able to engage in sport and physical activity.

It focuses much of its work on programmes that help people who do very little or no physical activity, and groups who are typically less active.

In June, Public Health England and the Royal College of GPs launched a campaign to promote the health benefits of taking a brisk 10-minute walk every day.

In Herefordshire people were more likely to walk as a leisure activity than for travel.

Some 56% of people said they took a recreational stroll at least once a week, compared with 33% that travelled at least once a week on foot.

In 2017 the Department for Transport announced it would be investing £1.2 billion of funding into helping more people to walk and cycle.

It is investing an extra £620,000 on outreach programmes to encourage children to walk to school.

Transport Minister Jesse Norman said: “Cycling and walking provide enormous benefits to both public health and the environment, and it’s good to see evidence that people are opting for a more active lifestyle.

“But it is also clear that as a cycling and walking nation the UK has a long way to go to match the best international models.”

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