English councils ban outdoor smoking at pubs and restaurants

Oxfordshire aims to be England’s first ‘smoke-free’ county by 2025, five years ahead of national target

Northumberland county, Durham, North Tyneside, Newcastle and the City of Manchester have all banned smoking in pavement pubs, restaurants and cafes (AFP via Getty Images)

Five local authorities in England have banned pavement smoking outside pubs, restaurants and cafes, and others are looking to follow suit with ambitious plans, as part of a push to become smoke-free by 2030.

Smokers in Northumberland, Durham, North Tyneside, Newcastle and the City of Manchester will have to find alternative places to light up, as councils have banned smoking where restaurants and bars have been granted licences to put out tables on the pavement.

In Gateshead, although no high-level policies have been set in place, all restaurants and bars granted pavement licences must be smoke-free.

Oxfordshire is following suit with its tobacco control strategy, through which it hopes to become the UK’s first smoke-free county by 2025, five years ahead of the government’s time frame.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the county already has a lower smoking rate than the rest of the country, with 12 per cent of the population identifying as smokers, compared with an average of 14.1 per cent across the UK. It aims to reduce that number to less than 5 per cent – the government definition of ‘smoke-free’ – over the next four years.

Policies in the strategy include banning smoking in outdoor environments and “creating healthy and family-friendly smoke-free spaces”.

Other actions include cracking down on illicit tobacco sales, supporting those who want to quit smoking, limiting smoking outside office buildings, and preventing young people from taking up smoking by limiting tobacco use in the presence of children – specifically in homes, cars, play parks and near school gates.

Ansaf Azhar, Oxfordshire’s public health director, said last week that the new strategy was aimed at preventing deaths from illnesses linked with tobacco use. “It’s not about telling people not to smoke. It is about moving and creating an environment in which not smoking is encouraged and they are empowered to do so,” he said.

Currently, there is no time frame in place for smoke-free pavement licensing in the county, and any decisions relating to the matter will be the responsibility of individual district councils. Mr Azhar acknowledged this, stating that changes would not happen overnight, and that the strategy was a “long game”.

In Cherwell district council, Conservative councillor Andrew McHugh put forward a proposal to make all new pavement licences smoke-free, but his proposal was dismissed as others felt that such a move would coincide poorly with the easing of coronavirus restrictions.

A report by Dr Adam Briggs, the public health official leading Oxfordshire’s strategy, found that smoking was the leading cause of preventable deaths across the county, which ultimately cost the public purse £120m.

He laid the blame for these deaths and associated costs with the tobacco industry. “We have got a condition that is entirely a commercially driven cause of death and disease,” he said. “It is impossible to be on the wrong side of history with tobacco consumption.”

Pro-smoking group the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, or Forest, has criticised Oxfordshire’s plans to stop people from smoking by creating outdoor “smoke-free environments”.

“It’s no business of local councils if adults choose to smoke, and if they smoke outside during working hours that’s a matter for them and their employer, not the council,” said Simon Clark, the director of Forest.

“After Covid, local authorities will have far more important things to do than tackle smoking … Reducing smoking rates to meet some idealistic target is not a priority for most people, and council policy should reflect that.”

At a lecture on public health last month, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said smoking was still a major cause of mortality and hospitalisation, and warned that the impact of tobacco was worse than Covid-19.

“It is likely that by the end of this year that at least as many and probably more people will have died from smoking-related disease than from Covid,” he said.

Smoking rates are in decline across the UK, with analysis suggesting more than a million people have quit smoking throughout the pandemic.

However, experts have warned that England is likely to miss its target of becoming smoke free by 2030, with a 2020 report by Cancer Research UK stating that the country would only achieve this milestone in 2037.

In order to achieve the goal on time, the pace of change must be at least 40 per cent faster than currently projected, the report said.