British racing’s year-round community impact

22 May 26

By Tom Baker, BHA Head of Social Impact

Over the past few days, Racing Together Community Week has showcased a wide-range of year-round activities that are having a positive impact in local communities.  

From charity events and activities to support young people to environmental clean-ups, this is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the positive impact our people and our industry have on communities across the country. 

British racing is not only an economic powerhouse and a major employer, but we are also committed to powering positive change. For centuries, the racehorse and the horseracing industry has been at the heart of communities across the country, shaping their development and supporting their people.

Across the sport there is an extraordinary amount of work taking place every day to provide opportunities for young people, bring communities together and demonstrate racing’s immense value to society.

Last year, our sport published its first ever social impact strategy. Led by the BHA and funded by the Racing Foundation with support from the Racing Post and Godolphin, the strategy sets out an industry-agreed approach for how we can enhance our positive impact on society – and do it in an even more coordinated way. 

Community Week provides a platform to showcase this year-round impact that racing has in communities across Britain, as we look to have a greater collective impact and inspire even people to get involved. 

Inspiring and engaging young people 

Something we are really excited about is the launch of Get Into Racing – a young person’s guide to the UK’s most exciting sport.

Developed in partnership with Great British Racing and with funding from the Racing Foundation, Godolphin and the Racing Post, this is a new resource that brings together the range of opportunities for young people to engage with racing. 

One of the priorities within the social impact strategy is the development of a pathway for young people, and one of the missing links is how we can consistently signpost them to the extensive opportunities that the racing industry has to offer.  

We all remember our early interactions with racing, its horses and its personalities. That feeling of discovering the sport for the first time is something that sticks with us fondly throughout our lives. 

Across our industry there is brilliant work taking place to excite and inspire the next generation. Great examples include National Racehorse Week, family friendly race days and initiatives like Racing to School and Autism in Racing.

But for those new to racing, these experiences – as incredible as they are – can sometimes be a one-off occurrence without a clear next step for engaging with the sport. 

So, Get Into Racing has been designed as a way of signposting people, and young people in particular, to the next stage in their racing journey.  

Its aim is to turn those one-off experiences into life-long engagement. This might be gaining hands-on experience with horses, exploring potential career pathways or simply staying connected to the sport. 

Strengthening engagement with schools 

A big part of engaging young people is our work with schools, both in racing’s more traditional communities and more widely across the country – and this is why we have started work to develop British Racing’s School Engagement Framework 

Racing already delivers a wide range of high-quality education programmes – from the school programmes for 14–16-year-olds as part of the Thoroughbred Skills Network to the Newmarket and Aintree Beacons delivered by Racing to School.  

There’s also seriously impressive work taking place in the alternative education provision space, with charities like HEROS and Greatwood demonstrating the impactful role ex-racehorses can have in young people programmes. 

Alongside this there are countless interactions with schools on a daily basis, whether that’s through Racing to School education days, careers marketing through the BHA’s Careersinracing team, or the outreach work undertaken by racecourses. 

This is often activity that has grown organically, so the next step is to better align what we do as an industry and identify those priority areas where we can have the greatest impact. 

Working with We Are Futures, who specialise in engaging young people, students, families and educators – we will look to create an even more compelling and effective engagement offer for schools and young people. 

One key output from this work will be a playbook for racing: a toolkit that draws on best practice from across the industry to enable organisations to deliver simple, consistent and high-quality activities that are aligned to the school curriculum.  

This will be a framework which can then be tailored to local communities and the needs of specific schools, making sure that our initiatives can properly support the ambitions of schools, young people and the British racing industry.  

Measuring that matters: demonstrating our social value 

Alongside expanding opportunities for young people, British racing is also taking important steps to better understand the positive difference we make to communities and the people within them. That way, we can accelerate work in those areas of greatest social value.  

The starting point was identifying the tools we need to accurately measure existing activity. Working with data experts we have been able to establish a methodology that can help us map the areas where racing contributes most. 

This resulted in the development of a new outcomes framework, which showed us how British racing’s activity could be measured, using processes that are used by government and other sports and charities. 

Put simply, it can help us see where we are making the biggest difference – from employment and skills development to supporting wellbeing and community cohesion. 

The next stage of this work will see the framework refined, with organisations across the industry supported to adopt a more coordinated and consistent approach to impact measurement. 

The result will be British Racing’s first social value report—a tool that will support advocacy, inform decision-making and help direct investment where it can have the greatest impact. Crucially, this work will also allow racing to track its progress over time, building a stronger and more compelling story about British racing’s role in society. 

Looking to the future  

Racing Together Community Week has showcased numerous examples this week of our sport’s social impact and how we can bring communities together – and it’s been particularly important to highlight how we are working to reduce the issues of loneliness and isolation.

A BHA Loneliness Pilot is already underway to explore how we can better utilise racing’s spaces to help reduce social isolation, with six racecourses looking at how they can tackle loneliness in their surrounding areas. It is being delivered by Racing Together and being funded by the Racing Foundation with support from the Racing Post and Godolphin. 

This is an example of how the sport is working collectively and in a more coordinated way to help address societal challenges, support our people and make a positive difference in our communities. 

British racing has a powerful story to tell in this space. We create opportunities, support communities and change lives.