National Fitness Council: Minutes, Papers and Reports

Records of the Advisory Council and of the Grants Committee which together constituted the National Fitness Council.

The papers include applications for grant for the provision of courses, organisers, playing fields, gymnasiums, community centres and other premises for physical training and recreation; minutes of meetings of the Advisory Council and its sub-committees; minutes of the Grants Committee; a ledger record of the grant payments made and reports on the work of the area committees of the council.

These records comprise the material taken into the custody of the Board of Education when the work of the council was suspended.

Under main subject headings in alphabetical order.

For further information concerning the council and its relationship with the board see ED 10/263

Topics

Education

The National Fitness Council for England and Wales had its origins in the Physical Training and Recreation Act, 1937, where provision was made for the appointment ofan Advisory Council for England and Wales, "to investigate and advise His Majesty's Government with regard to matters relating to the maintenance and improvement of the physical well being of the people by means of exercise and recreation," anda Grants Committee on whose recommendations the Board of Education could make grants for various purposes specified in the Act.

The two bodies though separate worked in close association and were known as the National Fitness Council.

The Act also provided for the formation of Area Committees. There were 22 of these committees, organised on a regional basis and their principal functions were to review existing facilities, to encourage local schemes, to consider applications for grant and to forward these applications with their recommendations to the Grants Committee.

The outbreak of the Second World War saw the suspension of its activities and it was never revived.

Section 53(4) of the Education Act, 1944 subsequently deleted from the Physical Training and Recreation Act, 1937, all references to the National Advisory Council, the local committees and the Grants Committee; and the initial consideration of post-war applications for grant under the Act became the responsibility of the Ministry of Education.