Cllr Izzi Seccombe, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, responds to the latest NHS Digital figures on the number of adult smokers.
“Councils, which are responsible for public health, run a range of innovative programmes to help people quit smoking and have taken great strides in helping people to stub out tobacco for good.
“Despite this, smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death, responsible for 77,900 deaths a year. On top of that there are 1.7 million hospital admissions each year that can be attributed to conditions caused by smoking.
“With one in five still smoking, clearly there is a lot more to be done.
“Councils are re-evaluating what they do on smoking cessation and tobacco control and how to be more effective, for example, reaching out to smokers with the greatest need such as routine and manual workers, pregnant smokers and those with mental illness.
“Councils remain committed to helping smokers quit, however this is made all the more difficult by the Government’s reductions to the public health budget, which councils use to fund stop smoking services. We have long argued that this is a short term approach which will only compound acute pressures for NHS services further down the line.”