Evaluation and Learning

Evaluation Overview 

Since 2018 our evaluation and learning approach has helped inform not just local change but national strategy. It continues to shape how places across the country are supported to enable active lives for all by tackling inactivity and addressing health inequalities. 

Learning what works and why  

At the heart of our work lies a central aim: not just to understand what has changed, but to uncover how and why that change has happened.  

It’s not enough to capture outcomes in isolation, we need to understand the underlying stories, decisions, relationships and conditions that shape those outcomes. Only then can we make sense of what truly works, for who, and in what context, so we can use this to adapt what we do next. 

Focus on ways of working 

We take this approach because it supports our overarching mission in the Place Partnership approach: enabling active lives for all by tackling inactivity and addressing health inequalities. Physical activity doesn’t just happen - it is shaped by the places we live, the opportunities we have, and the systems that surround us. Our evaluation and learning work uncovers the conditions (see the Enablers of Change) and connections that help people move more and live well. Without strengthening and sustaining these system conditions, there’s a risk of deepening inequalities and losing any gains in activity once a specific intervention ends. 

In March 2019, Greater Manchester Place Partners commissioned the consortium of Substance and Sheffield Hallam University to evaluate what was then called the ‘Local Delivery Pilot’ (now known as Place Partnerships). This marked a significant step in deepening our understanding of change. The evaluation used a blend of realist, developmental and participatory methods designed to recognise complexity and surface the rich, often hidden, processes or explanations behind change. 

Why do we evaluate in this way? 

Change in a place-based system doesn’t follow a straight line or happen in isolation. It’s shaped by people, relationships, environments, histories, and unexpected shifts. That’s why we use methods that embrace complexity and focus on learning, not just measurement.  

We want to understand how: 

• Complex environments: Our work involves multiple organisations, communities and moving parts. Simple cause-and-effect explanations doesn’t help us understand how or why something happened.
• Hidden influences: Numbers show outcomes, but they don’t explain the values, relationships or decisions that shaped them.
• Context matters: What works in one area might not work the same way elsewhere. We explore those differences to inform local adaptation and learning. 

This approach supports us to: 

• Learn what works and why: We want to understand what’s driving change, not just if change is happening. 
• Improve decision-making: Evidence and insight guide how we adapt and evolve our work. 
• Replicate success: When we understand why and how something has change, we can use this to support other places and sectors apply what we’ve learned. 
• Focus on ways of working: By embedding ways of working that enable active lives for all we can maintain this beyond specific interventions. 

How we evaluate 

Each of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs has a dedicated 'Place Partnership': a network of local residents, community organisations and key partners who share a passion for creating healthier, happier, and fairer communities. These local partnerships are key to our evaluation approach. 

Each place contributes to the wider regional evaluation by capturing and sharing stories, examples, data and reflections about how and why their approaches are reducing inactivity and addressing health inequalities.  

These stories and examples are captured through:  

• Reflective practice: Teams regularly capture learning from their work, helping surface real-time insights. 

• A ‘Counts and Measures’ submission twice a year: a spreadsheet that each locality adds both quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (stories) of activity and change themed around the 5 Enablers of Change. 

• Sense-making sessions: Regular conversations with local teams and researchers to reflect on what’s working, what’s shifting, and where learning can be deepened or scaled. 

Alongside local insights, we use national data, such as the Active Lives Survey, to build a fuller, more nuanced picture of what’s happening across Greater Manchester in the long term. 

All of this local insight is synthesised by the evaluation team into key themes and trends. These are then shared across Greater Manchester and nationally to inform strategy, share learning and improve delivery. 

Our learning environment is a core part of the place partnership model. It ensures we are not just delivering activity but continually learning, adapting, and improving.  

Our learning environment is a core part of the place partnership model. It ensures we are not just delivering activity but continually learning, adapting, and improving.  

Enablers of change

Since 2018, Greater Manchester has developed a regionally owned and embedded whole-system approach to getting more people moving. Through collective learning with our partners, we identified five key conditions, or enablers, that contribute to sustainable change. Each enabler has an underlying programme theory essentially, our best current understanding of how and why a particular way of working makes change happen. 

These ‘five enablers’ have become a cornerstone of GM Moving’s work and are now widely embedded across our region. 

By focusing on these enablers, we can: 

• Better understand how and why change happens.
• Use them as a framework to guide our work.
• Shape activity in ways that are fair, inclusive, and sustainable. 

We keep testing and refining them, because places, people, and systems evolve. And so must we. 

Please click the link below to read more about our five enablers of change or watch our explainer videos.  

The Development of the Nine Conditions

In 2023, the National Evaluation and Learning Partners (NELP) introduced a refined framework of nine conditions that enable place-based working. These nine nationally recognised conditions build directly on the insights developed in Greater Manchester and the other National Place Partnership areas nationally.

The nine conditions are now used throughout the national Place Partnership approach, which by 2025 has expanded to 65 areas across the country. This expansion reflects growing belief in the model and confidence in the role that our evaluation and learning has played in demonstrating its impact. 

To explore these 9 conditions with examples from Greater Manchester please click the link or download from further reading box

To learn more about the national approach to evaluating and learning in the Place Partnership work click here