The devil’s in the detail: Unpacking Australian council policies for active living, transport and recreation

Background:
Limited understanding exists regarding evidence-based policies within local government (LG) promoting environments supportive of physical activity (PA).

Purpose:
To determine the presence of LG policies and broadly assess their alignment with evidence-based recommendations for promoting activity-supportive environments.

Methods:
Australian councils (n=250) with cities or towns exceeding 10,000 residents were sent a survey investigating governance, transport, urban planning, liveability and other PA-related policies. Participants responded (yes/no) to indicate policy presence and had the option of providing additional comments. The survey aimed to identify the presence of policies supportive of activity-friendly environments. Data analysis comparing responses to evidence-based recommendations revealed their broad alignment with the evidence-base.

Results:
Fifty-seven responses were received from 52 councils (20.8%) across six Australian states. Most prioritised health, wellbeing or active communities (96.5%). Social inclusion was also a common policy focus (68.4%). However, few prioritised health impact assessments for urban planning (17.5%) and transport (14%) projects, or low-cost PA programs (21.1%).

Creating liveable communities (84.2%) and ensuring access to parks (82.5%) were strong focus areas, but only half prioritised access to daily destinations and dwelling densities (56.1%). Key related concepts such as ‘20-minute neighbourhoods’ (22.8%) were also less prominent.

Most prioritised walking (87.7%) and cycling (70.2%), but only half prioritised provision of cycling (56.1%) and walking (49.1%) infrastructure. Public transport (28.1%) and access requirements (22.8%), and walking (21.8%) and cycling (15.8%) participation targets were less common, and only one had public transport usage targets.

Conclusions:
Many councils prioritised healthy and active communities and had adopted high-level policies broadly aligned with evidence-based recommendations. However, the lack of more nuanced, evidence-based policies may impede progress towards achieving these aspirations. Future research is required to examine council policies more closely.

Practical implications:
Australian councils need to comprehensively adopt evidence-based policies to support active communities.

Funding:
This research received no funding.