"Exercise is medicine" - Leader of Colchester City Council praises active wellbeing programme
A 12-week initiative has the goal of reducing pressure on the NHS
Last updated 24th Sep 2025
An active wellbeing programme in Colchester is aiming to reduce GP visits and help the NHS.
The 12-week intitiative is designed for healthcare professionals to refer people that may be living with, or at risk of, long-term health conditions.
The programme provides personalised exercise plans, and one-to-one support, with access to a variety of sessions.
Colchester City Council Leader David King said that "exercise is medicine" and that they are trying to put "less pressure" on the NHS by working with them to provide this programme.
In interview with Greatest Hits Radio Essex News, he said:
"This is a programme that links National Health Service surgeries with active leisure. #
"It allows primary healthcare professionals, the people we might see when we go and see the doctor, physios and others, as well as GPs, to refer patients with medical conditions to tailored activity programmes.
"In short, what we're suggesting and what they are now increasingly doing is prescribing exercise."
"So we promote to primary health professionals that exercise is medicine. We know there's lots of evidence that exercise as medicine can enable long term lifestyle changes.
"It helps independence and sense of self, and it can reduce the impact of chronic long-term health conditions.
"We're getting about 50 patient referrals a month of this that's building this year. To date we've had 350."
The councillor also said that the programme is a choice for people to do:
"It's nothing that forces anybody to do anything. It's a set of choices, and that itself was really empowering that people choose to to find a tailored exercise programme starts with a first appointment.
"All of us are hoping that if a patient takes that choice to take up that referral from their GPs, that at the end it will leave them in a better place and leave them then deciding what to do for themselves, with a higher level of activity."
He also said that the NHS is under "huge strain."
"It's got more demand than it can easily cope with.
We know a good part of the demand is a reflection of lifestyle as well as age.
"That combination is something that we'd like to do something about"
"Nobody should be that far away from places in which they can find an opportunity for sports and exercise."
"There's no question there's a central truth. Exercise is medicine, and anything that helps relieve pain and difficulty, improve flexibility and sense of self and friendships as well. That is what I would recommend to anybody."