Disappointment at smoking rate
Maidenhead: Report on helping smokers to quit
A low quit rate in the Royal Borough has triggered more targeted support to help smokers give up cigarettes for good.
Councillors and public health officials sitting on the health and wellbeing board were told the borough has the lowest smoking quit rate within the South East region.
According to Charlotte Fox, public health programme officer, nearly 16,200 people in the Royal Borough are current smokers. 6,495 are female and 9,700 are male, while 77.7 per cent are of white ethnicity.
However, she said 55 people in 2019/20 set a quit date to give up smoking for good and only 40 successfully achieved this.
In comparison with other local authorities within the South East, the Royal Borough has the lowest quit rate. Nearly 790 people in Slough have successfully quit smoking in 2019/20, the highest number of people to do so in the region.
Speaking at the meeting on Tuesday, March 29, Dr
Huw Thomas, clinical chair at Frimley clinical commissioning group (CCG), said it was ‘disappointing’ that the quit rate was ‘fairly low’.
Within the corporate plan, which sets out the council’s aims and ambitions until 2026, it wants to decrease the number of adult smokers within the borough.
GP records show Datchet, Horton, and Wraysbury, Clewer and Dedworth East, Oldfield, St Mary’s, Bray,
Cox Green, Clewer and Dedworth West, and Hurley and Walthams have ‘disproportionate’ high rates of smoking.
Ms Fox said Solutions 4 Health offers a stop smoking service, which offers nicotine replacement therapy, in other local authorities in Berkshire except for the Royal Borough.
They will be looking at costs to introduce this service in the borough.
The Frimley CCG will undertake more targeted work with those communities with a high smoking rate to find out how it can reduce this. It will also use the council’s communications to promote the stop smoking service.
It will also look at integrating the stop smoking service with other services, such as alcohol services and mental health.
Public health consultant Anna Richards said: “These behaviours don’t happen in isolation. So, people who smoke, they also drink more, they may also potentially need further support around healthy weight or increasing their activity and movement. We’re really interested in exploring what that may look like for residents so they’re able to get more holistic support.”
She said they are doing another piece of work with colleagues in Slough and Bracknell looking at these issues and combining these services to meet residents’ needs.
This will require a public consultation to understand what they would like and help them the most.