After a gruelling few years, the downward pressure on most public services is set to continue, irrespective of which party wins the general election. The pressures on councils mean we may be facing the biggest reduction in sport and leisure infrastructure we have seen for 50 years. Health inequalities are widening in many places and the communities who could gain most from our services are being pushed further away from public sport and leisure.

The sector has to realise that to influence change we have to understand both the local and national political context and use these relationships to help shape a positive future for the sector.

Another dimension, which entwines itself through the economic, social and political is the mega-challenge of climate change. It is already having a huge impact on how the sector operates and, going forward, it will drive our costs, affect how our users travel, change habits and affect public and private resources. Unless we develop our understanding of climate change in our future thinking and planning we will miss opportunities or, at worst, face extinction.

System leadership
and collaboration
While our traditional approach to management and skills development has helped us to deal with our problems to date, they are not enough to cope with the current level of complexity and uncertainty.

The challenge is no longer just managing the existing system better, but changing how the system works for the good of everyone. This will require a fundamental shift to system leadership at a place level, a greater focus on collaboration across organisations and a shift in work behaviours. This is the only way we will secure a future for our sector in this increasingly complex world.

Change is already happening driven by Uniting the Movement. The recent Sport England announcement to invest in system change in 100 places, coupled with the roll out of leadership development to support these places, builds on the learning of the Local Delivery Pilots.

Some operators are seriously investing in realigning their business model to better support health and wellbeing and some councils are rationalising and reinvesting in infrastructure, including both places and spaces to support better social outcomes.

Integrated care boards and partnerships are, despite all their financial pressures, starting to see the need to collaborate across places and invest in prevention to address health inequalities, some are also realising that tackling inactivity needs to be part of this. There are many positive signs of real change happening.

Invest in leadership development
Now is the time to be bolder. We need to see an even bigger scaling up of leadership development for all those managing and working in facilities management, sport clubs and community organisations if they too are to embrace place-based working. Only by investing heavily in a co-ordinated and integrated system leadership development programme across the sector can we create a workforce that can operate effectively in the complexity we currently face.

If we can develop the leadership and the new skills necessary to collaborate across wider systems we may secure a positive future post the election and start to address the inequalities in activity.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that resources are scarce and the redistribution of existing funding alone will not be enough to sustain the scale of change needed. There has to be some new investment at some point soon.

Over the last few years our arguments for funding have not landed well, so repeating the same message does not seem a good idea. We have to get better at our political influencing, both locally and nationally. My main message is that it will be easier to influence if we are already delivering on these agendas and are seeking investment in our success, rather than shouting about our possible demise. Simply asking for more money will fail. Our sector has to change first.

Solve the social care crisis
I think now is the moment to join forces with other professionals to make a composite case to all political parties to solve the social care crisis once and for all. This may seem an extreme solution, but the social care crisis has been directly and indirectly responsible for the growing financial constraints on the sector for many years. It drove many councils to see leisure contracts as a cash cow to subsidise other rising costs and now the burden of social care is partly responsible for the local government funding crisis leading to facility rationalisation.

If the social care burden was removed from councils, in time they would be able to start to reinvest in services that support health and wellbeing and remain popular with their voters. Although we are seeing some Integrated Care Systems starting to lean into the need to invest more in prevention and health inequality, they too are restricted by the pressure on acute services and the constant need to support social care to relieve the pressures on acute services. If the social care funding pressure was removed we would gradually see ICSs invest in prevention including addressing inactivity.

Despite the challenging context we currently face, I remain hopeful that we can survive and reshape a positive future if we build on some positive changes taking place and embrace even more radical change.

We must focus on understanding the complex context we have to navigate. The traditional management models are no longer capable of coping with the current complexity, so we need to more fully embrace system leadership and invest at scale in leadership development.

In adopting system change models we can then open up routes to better collaboration with other system partners at a place level and, in doing so, start to address the deep seated inequalities in activity levels. True collaboration will call for some brave decisions which in turn could lever more investment upstream.

Martyn Allison is a social change agent and influencer, as well as a hon member of cCLOA. Over his career he has been a chair of trustees of social enterprise company, Big Difference Company and assistant chief executive of Leicester City Council