Stopping smoking: Councillors hoping to create 'smoke-free Calderdale' by 2030

It has more than £260,000 available to support services aimed at helping people to stop smoking.

And a health goal is to effectively achieve a “smoke-free Calderdale” by 2030, senior councillors have agreed.

Council cabinet members agreed to accept £263,562 made available to it from a Government grant.

Part of Government proposals to eventually create a smoking-free country has been support for measures to help people stop smoking, said cabinet member for Public Health, Coun Tim Swift.

Money being made available to councils is ring-fenced for the purpose, he added.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calling the General Election for July 4 meant legislation – including proposals which would have meant some younger age groups could never legally buy related products – has not been enacted.

But the money had already been allocated and can be used, Coun Swift (Lab, Town) told colleagues.

The senior councillors also agreed to delegate the use of local stop smoking services and support grant funding in subsequent years to the director of public health in consultation with the council’s deputy leader and public health cabinet member.

They also agreed plan priorities including an overarching goal to achieve a smoke-free Calderdale by 2030.

This would mean less than five per cent of the adult population still smoking and no young people taking up smoking.

A range of measures to achieve this include supporting smokers to quit and clamping down on illicit tobacco sources.

Councillors were told in their briefing paper: “Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable ill health, disability and death in the UK.

“It increases the risk of developing over 50 serious health conditions and is a leading cause of health inequalities, accounting for half of the difference in life expectancy between the most and least affluent communities in England.

“People who smoke are almost twice as likely to need some form of social care than people who have never smoked.”

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