The community fund, with grants of up to £1,000 at a time, is available for partners who want to run smokefree events and initiatives.
Oxfordshire County Council has set up an alliance of partners to help develop initiatives to nudge local people into not smoking. Projects have included stopping smoking at playparks and school gates as well as a smokefree event to celebrate the King’s coronation. A community fund is available to support the work, which complements the help provided by the local stop smoking service for residents to quit.
Nudging people into not smoking
The Tobacco Control Alliance has more than 50 partners, including the district and city councils, local NHS trusts and voluntary sector. It meets three times a year to share good practice and support delivery of the county’s Tobacco Control Strategy. The community fund, with grants of up to £1,000 at a time, is available for partners who want to run smokefree events and initiatives.
“The approach is to support ideas that help nudge people,” said Oxfordshire County Council Health Improvement Practitioner, Charlotte Iddon. “We do not want to lecture. Instead, it is about de-normalising smoking. And you can only do that by working together as a whole community and system. We have a really good stop smoking service, Stop for Life Oxon, but to have the greatest impact you want everyone pulling together.”
The partnership work has led to a wide range of initiatives – with the fund used to help pay for equipment and signage where needed. For example, Witney Town Council was given money to pay for new signs around playgrounds encouraging people not to smoke. Local children even took part in a competition to design the signs.
Witney Town Council Leader Councillor Dr Ruth Smith said the district was motivated to act after local polling showed that 90 per cent of Oxfordshire smokers themselves agreed that creating smokefree parks was a good idea.
And she said getting children involved was a great way to introduce the initiative. "We were delighted with the winning designs – the children really grasped the message. The time is right to remind everyone that smoking and vaping where people are trying to enjoy the outdoors is not on. We hope this is a healthy message and a healthy measure for children."
The wide range of partners
The local football association has also encouraged spectators not to smoke at football matches – and now efforts are being made to get the local rugby and rowing associations to follow suit.
Turning Point, which run the drug and alcohol Roads to Recovery service, has also got involved. Their advisers are trained to offer support, but the fund has been used to supply them with vapes to help their clients to quit smoking.
And Response, which manages sheltered housing for mental health patients, has made its accommodation smokefree and was given money to buy ballot bins for cigarette butts . These allow smokers to vote on a question on the side of the bin by putting the butts in one side or another.
Ms Iddon said: “It’s about reminding people not to smoke inside in a friendly way through a bit of fun. They can be asked to vote on anything -their favourite Marvel character or whether they want a new coffee machine installed.”
Smaller community groups have also made use of the fund. For example, the local residents’ association in Barton applied for funding for some Smokefree signage for an event held for the King’s coronation.
Oxfordshire has also encouraged local schools to create smokefree school gates by asking parents not to light up when picking their children up.
‘You have to be patient’
“There is plenty more we want to do,” said Ms Iddon. “When we get the government Smokefree 2030 funding we will be putting some of it into the community fund to keep supporting this partnership work.
“We have also been doing some research into vaping, surveying young people about how often they use them and we have identified gaps in support for schools over vaping messaging. We are going to pull together the best evidence for them – there is a lot of misinformation out there.”
Ms Iddon said one of the key lessons that has been learned is that community work like this takes time. “Sometimes you have to keep pushing. With the smokefree sidelines initiative it took us quite some time to get there – fortunately we had one councillor who was very supportive and now we have the local FA on board that has paved the way for talks with other sports bodies.
“It’s the same with the work with Witney – it has got others thinking. You have to promote what you are doing and the achievements you have and try to influence others.
“And sometimes you have to look at things from different angles. We initially started trying to work with the social housing providers to encourage them to become smokefree, but because they are part of big national organisations they could not do something that was purely local. So we are now working with the district and city councils on this. Around one in three social housing tenants smoke so it could have a significant impact.”
Councillor Dr Nathan Ley, Cabinet Member for Public Health, Inequalities, and Community Safety, said: “We’ve been working tirelessly with local partners and organisations across the county to help us achieve the ambition of a smokefree Oxfordshire.
“One of the main pillars of our Tobacco Control Strategy, which will assist us in reaching this goal, is creating smokefree environments. In addition to helping 'de-normalise' smoking around children, establishing these smokefree environments will also reduce the risk of exposure to second-hand smoke. There has already been significant progress, with numerous initiatives already in place and it's fantastic that even more is planned.”