More than 5.1 million Britons, including three-quarters-of-a-million schoolchildren, got active on National Fitness Day 2017, ukactive figures have revealed.

This year the health body commissioned polling from research firm ComRes to calculate participation levels, along with real-time figures from DataHub, website sign-ups and additional reporting.

A total of 4.3 million adults and 778,926 schoolchildren took part in the event on 27 September. This is a sharp rise from last year, when the official figure was 1 million people.

More than 20,000 free events across 6,297 venues celebrated National Fitness Day 2017, which is now in its seventh year.

This year’s day began with Strictly Come Dancing star Darcey Bussell CBE leading a mass workout event in Central London. The event proved popular on social media, attracting tweets from the likes of Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, Anthony Joshua and Davina McCall.

ukactive strategic projects director and National Fitness Day lead Will Smithard said: “We want to broaden the reach of National Fitness Day even further next year and are eager to work with as many parties as possible to further our mission of getting more people, more active, more often.”