NHS opens boxing gym at Goldie Leigh in Abbey Wood

The NHS has opened a boxing gym in south-east London, a dedicated facility designed to harness the non-contact element of the sport’s benefits for mental health.

The gym at the NHS’s Goldie Leigh site in Abbey Wood, Bexley, focuses on therapeutic, non-contact boxing and supports mental health service users and those with learning disabilities, Parkinson’s, dementia and other neurological conditions.

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust partnered with mental health charity Off The Ropes to launch the gym on a 10-year lease in a previously unused space.

The charity was founded by former professional boxer Warren Dunkley, an NHS occupational therapist with 25 years’ experience.

Mr Dunkley first saw how boxing could support mental health and wellbeing while working on a mental health ward.

He said: “A few [clients] found out that I used to box and then said, ‘Can you bring your pads in, can we do some boxing training?’ and then it has kind of just took off from there.

“It’s ticking two boxes for me because obviously I like helping people and I like my job as an occupational therapist, but I get to do my passion of boxing as well.”

Off The Ropes began by offering weekly boxing sessions on an acute ward.

After a strong response, the programme expanded to three sessions a week across acute, intensive care and female wards.

Josh Nelson, who was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder in his early teens, has been boxing for 15 years and is now a coach.

“I can have a manic episode where everything is really heightened. I can also be the total opposite, the other way around. Boxing has helped a great deal,” he said.

“It’s instilled discipline in me, focus, to keep working hard and not giving up.”

He described the skills he has learned and people he has met as “priceless”.

Lauren Louise has been boxing for 10 years.

She said: “Boxing brings out a side to me that I never used to think I had – it brought out my confidence.

“It doesn’t matter what level of boxing you are, it’s the fact that you can come here and do what you’re capable of doing.”

According to NHS England, about 3.8 million people were in contact with the NHS for mental health, learning disability and autism services in 2024 – up by almost two-fifths compared with before the pandemic.

Dr Ife Okocha, Oxleas Trust’s chief executive and a psychiatrist, said we need to see more projects like the Off The Ropes gym.

He said: “What we don’t want is people struggling to find commercial properties when we can support them and make sure that the NHS estate is also not just a health facility, but a wellbeing facility for communities that we serve.”