SPARTA Sport and Wellbeing Day 2025

The SPARTA Sport and Wellbeing Day 2025 took place on 18th July 2025. Teams and participants from locations across the country from both the DfT and MHCLG attended the event which, for the first time, was held at Imber Court Sports Club near Hampton Court.

The change of venue was necessitated after the previous venue cancelled all Government Sports Day bookings at very short notice leaving the holding of the event this year in great doubt. It was only due to the hard work of the SPARTA team and all the volunteers on the day that the event was able to go ahead.

Despite all the troubles leading up to the day it turned out to be a glorious day (but probably a little too hot for some) filled with incredible teambuilding, wellbeing and most importantly fun.

SPARTA was pleased to welcome the Swinging Mandarins band to the event to provide live music. The band is made up of civil servants and they performed all afternoon with some wonderful jazz music. A short video of one of their numbers is available to view in the sports day gallery (link can be found later in this article).

Despite this year’s change of venue, we were still able to hold the four main team competitions - Football, Netball, Cricket and Rounders – and there were still lots that could be entered on the day including tennis, pétanque, wanging the wellie, the sack race, table tennis, darts, the ever-popular quiz and a couple of running races. We will explore what else can be brought back for next year’s event. We would really like to hold more events that you would like to see added so please send us feedback in our survey.

The results of the events can be found on the SPARTA website at https://www.spartarecreation.co.uk/sparta-sports-day-results

Feedback

SPARTA would really like your help in improving Sport and Wellbeing Day. Please give us your feedback by completing our VERY short survey https://forms.office.com/r/Y4AP3wmhmm

We were really pleased that Nick Joyce, the Director of the DfT Corporate Delivery Group, was able to join us again and present the medals at the end of the day. We thank him for all his help.

If you won medals in any event and were unable to pick them up on the day and would still like to receive them then please contact Jason Marchant jason.marchant@dft.gov.uk

Our official photographer, Paul Weekes (DfT), has provided us with a selection of superb pictures which are available on our website at https://www.spartarecreation.co.uk/sparta-sports-day-gallery Feel free to take a look and see if you feature in any of them.

Above, A rare occurrence in the rounders, Joint Winners. The teams of MAJOR ROUNDERS PROJECTS and THE THROWBACK TO PHASE 2B who could not be separated despite playing a tiebreaker.