Sport England and Big Lottery Fund have invested £5.2 million creating Active Places - an exciting new, online database of sports facilities in England. This easy-to-use website is there to encourage everyone in the country to get active by helping them find out about sports and fitness facilities in their area. It's free to use and is the most comprehensive database of its kind in England.

The website allows you to search for sports facilities in England through a number of ways. You are able to browse an interactive map of the country, search facilities for your local area, or use the name and address of a specific facility to find out further information.

This is just the first stage in a very ambitious project with Active Places currently holding information on over 50,000 facilities and eleven different facility types. Allt his information is constantly under review.

The database includes information on a wide range of sports facilities - from sports halls to ski slopes, swimming pools to health and fitness. It also includes local authority leisure facilities as well as commercial and club sites.

If the type of facility or information you are looking for isn't featured then don't worry as new information is being added to the database all the time. New facility types being added this year include:

• Indoor athletic tracks

• Squash courts

• Rowing facilities

• Studios

Activeplaces.com is all part of a goal of getting 70% of the population active for 30 minutes, five times a week, by 2020. Please use the link to the Active Places home page - the more people that use activeplaces.com the better