Waltham Forest Council is to spend £2.25million over the next five years on cutting smoking rates in the borough.
A council report published this week describes smoking as the primary preventable cause of ill health in the borough. "To meet the challenge of Smokefree 2030, where less than 5% of adults are smoking, we need to accelerate the progress in supporting our remaining smokers to quit," the council says.
Officers add that they want "innovation and new approaches to support all remaining smokers to quit, including those where prevalence is higher".
In line with other upper-tier councils around the country, Waltham Forest is commissioning a new stop-smoking service to run from April 2027 to March 2030, with the option of a two-year extension.
The council says the evidence shows that locally commissioned services offering behavioural support alongside nicotine replacement treatments "offers the best chance of a smoker successfully quitting".
The borough's smoking cessation service is currently run by Queen Mary University of London, and prevalence among residents has fallen from 16.2% to 8.1%. The average cost of each person who quits in Waltham Forest is £937, above the London median of £798.
Vaping leaves the council with what its report calls a paradox. Vapes are "an important stop-smoking aid" and are generally less harmful than cigarettes, but rising rates of vaping have prompted caution. "As the long-term health effects of vaping are not fully known, we need to discourage children, young people and non-smokers from vaping," the report says.
Whoever wins the contract will be required to "help protect our children and young people" from vaping or smoking, while "maintaining the use of vapes for existing adult smokers as a key stop-smoking aid".
