SkillsActive - sector skills council for active leisure, learning and wellbeing - has been handed more than £500,000 in a bid to help meet skills gaps in the playwork and fitness sectors.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills' (BIS) Growth and Innovation Fund has awarded £278,000 through the Joint Investment Programme strand - matched by employers.

In total, the funding will enable more than 1,300 fitness professionals to undergo training and become specialist instructors in order to better respond to clients' needs.

SkillsActive said that professionals will be able to gain behaviour change skills and customer service, which will enable them to deliver tailored interventions for inactive people.

Fitness Industry Association chief executive David Stalker said: "The fund offers employers the opportunity to receive up to 50 per cent funding for staff training in areas such as customer service, behaviour change and working with specialist populations.

"These skills are essential for our operators to realise the ambitions which the whole industry came together to set in the TwentyTen Commission."

SkillsActive has also secured £230,000 of match funding to help 1,000 playworkers gain the Level 3 Award in Transition to Playwork.

Image: shutterstock.com/Dean Mitchell