The kids' activity every English county searches for more than anywhere else

1. 1

   Parents in West Sussex search for holiday clubs and wraparound care at one and a half times the rate of parents in West Yorkshire, and not one of England's seven big city regions makes the top half of the table. West Sussex scores 1.41x the national rate, West Yorkshire 0.91x.

2. 2

   England's cricket county is Greater Manchester, not Yorkshire. Greater Manchester searches for cricket clubs and coaching at 1.64x the national rate (1,150 searches a month), ahead of Lancashire (1.47x) and West Yorkshire (1.41x).

3. 3

   Wales searches for junior rugby at 2.93x the UK rate, and rugby's 144% margin over the runner-up activity is the widest anywhere in the study. In England, Somerset (2.29x) leads.

4. 4

   London generates 44% of the UK's tennis-lesson searches from 24% of its kids'-activity searches, an over-index of 1.84x. No other county scores above 1.08x.

5. 5

   Derbyshire is England's drama county at 1.75x the national rate, and the score rises rather than falls when the basket is trimmed to head terms. We can't explain it.

Parents in West Sussex search for holiday clubs and wraparound care at 1.41x the national rate, the highest of any English county with meaningful search volume. Parents in West Yorkshire search for them at 0.91x, the lowest. That is a gap of roughly one and a half times between the top and bottom of the table (1.55x on the full basket, 1.51x when the basket is trimmed to head terms), and West Sussex stays top on every version we ran.

Childcare terms (18 holiday club phrasings and eight after-school and wraparound phrasings) make up 5.6% of all UK kids'-activity searches. In West Sussex they make up 7.9%; in West Yorkshire 5.1%. The over-index score is the ratio of the two. The table covers the 37 counties with at least 5,000 searches a month across the whole basket; the ten smaller counties are dealt with further down.

Nine of the top ten are shire counties in the south and east of England; Bristol is the only city among them. The seven metropolitan counties, England's big city regions, take seven of the bottom eleven places among all 47 counties, and not one of them makes the top half of the table on any version of the basket we ran. West Yorkshire is bottom or second-bottom on every run.

Pooled together, the seven metropolitan counties search for childcare at 0.97x the national rate and the rest of England at 1.22x. The gap between those two pooled figures is modest, and it narrows to 0.95x against 1.08x when the basket is trimmed to terms with at least 500 national searches a month. The direction never changes. What is not modest is the ranking: the places with the most families in England are consistently the places where holiday childcare takes the smallest share of what parents search for.

One further pattern, on smaller volumes: the six metropolitan counties outside London all over-index more on after-school and wraparound care than on holiday clubs (Tyne and Wear 1.23x against 0.86x, Merseyside 1.20x against 0.91x), while Surrey is the mirror image (holiday clubs 1.31x, wraparound 0.89x). After-school volumes are 140 to 390 searches a month in those counties, so read that as a lean, not a finding.

Three explanations fit the data, and the data can't separate them. The first is free provision. The Holiday Activities and Food programme funds free holiday clubs for children on benefits-related free school meals through all 153 upper-tier local authorities in England, at more than £200 million a year; if those free places are concentrated where eligibility is highest, families there have less reason to search for a paid one. The second is commuting. The counties at the top are commuter belt, where the school day ends at 3.15pm and a parent on a London train is home nearer 7pm. The third is supply. In rural and semi-rural counties there are fewer providers per family, so each family searches more before finding a place. The national wraparound childcare programme, which has funded local authorities to expand before- and after-school places since September 2024, made its final grant payment in March 2026, and these figures were pulled weeks before the first October half-term since that funding ended.

Ed Hollinghurst, Director of Pembee, says the ranking inverts the usual assumption about where childcare pressure sits. In their view, city families have more clubs within walking distance and more free provision to fall back on, so the search for a paid holiday club is a less anxious one; in the commuter shires it is the only route to covering a working day. They add that anyone deciding where to open a new holiday or after-school club should read the table as a list of places where demand is running ahead of what parents can easily find.

Each county is coloured by its most over-indexed activity across the 18 activity categories: the one that takes a bigger share of that county's activity searches than it does of the UK's. A score of 1.00 means the county searches an activity at exactly the national rate; 2.00 means twice the national rate. Childcare terms are ranked separately above and left out here, so that holiday clubs don't win every county by default.

Rugby wins 12 of the 35 counties with enough volume to call, trampolining six and netball five. That says more about rugby than about the counties: it is the most regionally uneven sport in the basket, running from 0.67x in London to more than 3x in Cumbria and Cornwall, so it comes out on top wherever the other categories sit near average. Ten categories win at least one county.

* Fewer than 5,000 activity searches a month. Scores for these counties are inflated by Google's rounding and are not used in any claim in this piece; see the small-counties section below. Essex and Berkshire's forest school wins are driven by the generic term "forest schools" rather than "forest schools near me" (1.01x nationally), so they read as interest in the idea more than a hunt for a place.

Many of the races are close. In 19 of the 35 counties above the floor the gap between the winner and the runner-up is under 10%, in 12 it is under 5%, and Merseyside and Durham are dead heats. Treat the map as each county's strongest lean, not its whole personality. The findings below stick to the counties where the gap is wide enough to mean something and the score survives trimming the basket.

Greater Manchester searches for cricket clubs and coaching at 1.64x the national rate, on 1,150 searches a month: the highest score of any English county with real volume, and a 27% margin over its runner-up activity (football). The score rises to 1.66x and 1.78x when the basket is trimmed to head terms. Greater Manchester generates close to 8% of the UK's cricket searches from under 5% of its kids'-activity searches.

Yorkshire, which Google splits into four counties, is a cricket county on this measure too. All four score above the national rate, and West Yorkshire's 1.41x on 680 searches a month is the fifth-highest score in England and the largest cricket volume outside London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands. None of them matches Greater Manchester. Lancashire, whose county club plays at Old Trafford in Greater Manchester, sits at 1.47x.

Rugby is the mirror image. Greater Manchester (0.92x), the West Midlands (0.91x) and Greater London (0.67x) have the three lowest rugby scores in England, and all three big city regions lean to cricket or football instead.

Three caveats. "Cricket clubs near me" is searched by adults as well as parents, so this measures appetite for cricket generally, with a family lean. Greater Manchester has some of England's largest South Asian communities, where cricket is widely played; that is a plausible part of the answer, and one the search data alone can't confirm. And the objection we expect from Yorkshire: parents there don't need to search, because the local club is where their children already play. Search data alone can't rule that out, but two things cut against it. Yorkshire parents are searching, at well above the national rate. And Wales, where junior rugby is at least as embedded as cricket is in Yorkshire, searches for it at nearly three times the UK rate, so familiarity does not seem to stop parents looking up a club. Swimming is different: a child on the coast can swim without lessons, but there is no cricket without a club.

Hollinghurst says the result will needle Yorkshire, and that the fair reading is not that Yorkshire has gone off cricket, since all four of its counties search above the national rate, but that Greater Manchester's appetite is running higher still. They note that a 1.64x score on more than a thousand searches a month is exactly the kind of demand a junior cricket section should be building a waiting list around.

Wales searches for junior rugby at 2.93x the UK rate, on 940 searches a month. Rugby's margin over Wales's runner-up activity (drama, at 1.20x) is 144%, the widest winner-to-runner-up gap anywhere in the study, and the score barely moves (2.79x and 2.65x) on the trimmed baskets. Wales accounts for roughly one in ten of the UK's junior rugby searches from about 3% of its kids'-activity searches.

Within England, rugby is a West Country story. Somerset (2.29x, 300 searches a month) is the highest-scoring English county with real volume, followed by Bristol (2.20x), Wiltshire (1.88x), Devon (1.84x) and North Yorkshire (1.80x). Cornwall, Cumbria and Gloucestershire all score above 2.9x but on fewer than 5,000 total searches a month, so they sit in the too-small-to-call section. Tyne and Wear scores 2.30x on the full basket but its winner switches to martial arts once the small terms are trimmed, so we don't count it as a rugby county.

The big cities generate the raw volume (London's 1,510 rugby searches a month are the most of any county) but a small share of what their parents look for. The over-index map of rugby is a fair map of where the club game is strongest at grassroots level: Wales, the West Country and the south west.

Hollinghurst says Wales is the one result in the study nobody will argue with, and that its size is the useful part: a 144% margin means rugby isn't one option among many for Welsh parents, it's the default. They suggest the English numbers are the more useful ones for clubs, because the West Country scores show demand running well ahead of the national rate across a whole region rather than in a single city.

Greater London searches for tennis lessons and coaching at 1.84x the national rate, on 6,050 searches a month. No other English county scores above 1.08x (Hertfordshire). London produces 24% of the UK's kids'-activity searches and 44% of its tennis-lesson searches.

The runner-up in London is forest school at 1.70x, but that score comes almost entirely from the generic term "forest schools" rather than "forest schools near me" (see the methodology note), so tennis is the honest winner. London is also bottom of England for rugby (0.67x), horse riding (0.55x), Scouts and Guides (0.80x) and drama (0.82x).

Tennis is the sport in the basket most tied to paid coaching: a child can join a football team or a rugby club, but tennis lessons are bought. Dense cities with plenty of park courts, plenty of coaching operators and the household incomes to pay for lessons are where that shows up in search.

Hollinghurst says London's tennis number is a reminder that over-index scores measure what parents buy, not what children play. In their view, tennis is the most coaching-dependent sport in the study and London has the density of courts and the incomes to sustain it. They add that the same logic explains why the capital is bottom for rugby, scouting and horse riding: activities that need a field, a hall or a stable.

Derbyshire searches for drama, acting and theatre classes at 1.75x the national rate, on 380 searches a month: the highest of any English county with real volume, 17% clear of its runner-up (rugby), and rising to 1.85x and 1.91x when the basket is trimmed to head terms. Durham (1.28x) and Merseyside (1.23x) are the next English counties. Greater London is last at 0.82x.

We don't have an explanation, and we'd rather say so than invent one. Derbyshire has no obvious institution that Merseyside or London lack, and the finding survived every check we ran. If a Derbyshire drama teacher can explain it, we'd like to hear from them.

Drama is also the winning category for Scotland (1.26x, 1,150 searches a month) and Northern Ireland (1.49x, 400 searches a month), though in both cases the margin over the runner-up is 2%, so read those as a lean rather than a result.

Hollinghurst says Derbyshire is their favourite result precisely because it resists a tidy story. They point out that unexplained local demand is usually the sign of a handful of very good local providers doing their job, and that a drama school or youth theatre in Derbyshire should take the number as evidence of a market that is bigger than the county's size suggests.

Beneath the winners, individual categories give some counties an unmistakable lean:

• Swimming is landlocked. The three counties that search for swimming lessons at the highest rate are the West Midlands (1.14x, 2,930 searches a month), South Yorkshire (1.11x) and Greater Manchester (1.09x). The coast sits at the bottom: Devon 0.80x, Dorset 0.71x, Cornwall 0.67x and the Isle of Wight 0.50x (on 90 searches). Swimming is the flattest category in the study, with every county above the floor between 0.67x and 1.14x, but the direction is the same one we found in the US version of this study: where water is ambient, lessons are searched for less.
• Netball is a Home Counties sport. Hertfordshire (1.66x, 210 searches a month), Bedfordshire (1.66x, on 130 searches) and Surrey (1.54x, 210 searches) lead. Hertfordshire (1.55x) and Surrey (1.43x) hold when the basket is trimmed; Bedfordshire drops to 1.39x. Netball wins Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Northamptonshire and Kent outright, though the Kent and Northamptonshire margins are 2%.
• The West Midlands is the most football-hungry big region. It searches for football coaching and academies at 1.33x the national rate (970 searches a month), just ahead of Merseyside (1.30x) and Greater Manchester (1.29x). Bedfordshire (1.42x) and South Yorkshire (1.38x) top the table overall, but every county above the floor sits within about 40% of the national rate. Football is everywhere.
• Horse riding is Devon. Devon searches for riding lessons and riding schools at 1.57x the national rate (1,010 searches a month), followed by Lincolnshire (1.43x) and Somerset (1.39x). One of the few results on the map that surprises no one.
• Martial arts leads in Buckinghamshire and the North East. Buckinghamshire (1.46x, 980 searches a month), Tyne and Wear (1.41x) and West Yorkshire (1.41x, 2,020 searches a month) top the martial arts table. Scotland over-indexes at 1.24x, and North Lanarkshire at 2.02x (550 searches a month, rising to 2.28x and 2.35x on the trimmed baskets) is the one council area outside England with a score we'd stand behind. Martial arts searches include adults, so treat this as a lean.
• Gymnastics is a northern and Midlands city thing. The West Midlands (1.24x, 2,300 searches a month), South Yorkshire (1.24x), Greater Manchester (1.19x) and Merseyside (1.12x) lead the gymnastics table, though the spread is too small to make much of.
• The nations. Wales is rugby. Scotland's most over-indexed activities are drama (1.26x) and martial arts (1.24x). Northern Ireland's are drama (1.49x) and rugby (1.47x), and Northern Ireland also searches for after-school care at 1.61x the UK rate, the highest of the four nations.

Twelve English counties generate fewer than 5,000 activity searches a month across the whole basket, from Rutland (1,250) to Suffolk (4,720). Twelve of the 13 council areas we pulled in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are under the same floor; only Glasgow (5,670) clears it, and Glasgow's winner changes on every version of the basket (rugby, drama, swimming), so we make no claim for it.

Google reports any term with a trickle of searches as 10 a month. In a county with 1,500 searches in total, a category with 12 keywords picks up around 120 searches a month of pure rounding. That is why the smallest areas are "won" by the categories with the most keywords (Coding & STEM, Scouts and Guides, netball) and why Rutland (2.56x) and the Isle of Wight (2.05x) top the raw childcare ranking on a 26-keyword childcare basket. Those rows are published in the tables for completeness and excluded from every claim in this piece.

The four nations are large enough to compare on activities but not, in Scotland's case, on childcare. Northern Ireland searches for holiday clubs and wraparound care at 1.15x the UK rate, England at 0.96x, Wales at 0.85x and Scotland at 0.82x. Scotland's figure is at least partly a language problem: the Scottish term is "out of school care", which is not in our basket, so we don't read anything into it.