Success Rates of Stop Smoking Services in England

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Mapping the path to a smoke-free England

Local Authorities across the UK work tirelessly to improve the health and wellbeing of the people in their communities. One important way they do this is through the delivery of Stop Smoking Services. Stop Smoking Services provide free expert advice, guidance and support to help smokers to quit. Support in the form of nicotine replacement products such as nicotine patches, sprays or vapes may also be provided. 

At Haypp we want to recognise and support the important work local authorities do to help  the people in their community and to contribute to a smoke-free future for the UK. Using the latest data available from the NHS and other sources, we have created an interactive map to identify the local authorities in England that have been most effective at helping smokers to quit. 

You can use the interactive map to get a picture of how stop smoking services are performing across England. For example, you can see which authorities have been most successful at helping smokers quit, those that invested the most in stop smoking services, and which quit smoking aids have been most effective.

The data used in this interactive map will be updated regularly to give an up to date picture on stop smoking services in England. The data currently being displayed is from April to June 2024. 

Top performing local authorities

From the data, the average quit smoking success rate across all local authorities is 57%. However, the top five local authorities have success rates that are significantly higher. In first place is York with an impressive 82% success rate, followed by North Yorkshire on 80%. In some local authorities, it is proving more difficult to achieve success. Four of the bottom five have success rates between 25% and 31%, and the lowest in this dataset, Hartlepool, has a 13% success rate. 

Quit-smoking rates amongst pregnant women

Encouraging pregnant women to quit is especially important because smoking during pregnancy leads to poor birth outcomes. Unfortunately, just over half of pregnant women who set a date to quit smoking manage to succeed. This is despite many authorities offering special incentives for pregnant women to quit. The big picture on smoking rates in pregnancy is more positive however. 2024 saw record low numbers of pregnant women smoking in the UK as a result of targeted support offered by the NHS and local authorities.

Successful quitters by age group

Across different age groups, we see a broadly similar pattern of success and failure rates. The age group that was most successful at giving up smoking was the 60 and over cohort, with a 59% success rate. Concerningly, the under 18 age group seem to find it most difficult to quit, with just 51% successfully stopping smoking. This age group also had the highest percentage of potential quitters where the outcomes were unknown.

Are vapes leading the way?

Many local authorities across England now make vapes available as an aid to people trying to quit smoking. There are a variety of different types of stop smoking aids provided by local authorities. These can include nicotine replacement therapies such as patches or gum, nicotine containing vapes, non-tobacco nicotine pouches, and pharmaceutical supports. The data shows the relative effectiveness of the various stop smoking aids. From the data, we can see that the average success rate for those who use stop-smoking aids was 57%. However the average success rate for those who used nicotine-containing vapes to help them quit was 63%, a full six percentage points higher.  Those who opted not to use any medication or nicotine replacement therapy had the lowest success rate by some margin, at 46%.

When considering why some local authorities are having high success rates, is notable that four out of the top five offer nicotine vapes as a stop smoking tool. These are York, Essex, Redcar and Cleveland, Stoke-on-Trent. It is clear that vapes have become an important tool for smokers trying to quit, and that the local authorities that provide vapes as part of their stop smoking services are seeing positive results. 

Areas with the greatest success of using vapes as a stop-smoking aid?

In some areas, vapes have proved remarkably successful as a stop-smoking aid. In Darlington, 90% of quitters who used a nicotine-vape successfully quit smoking. The figure was 86% in both Calderdale and Somerset. These success rates are very high when compared with the overall average success rate of of 57%.

The cost of quitting

Helping people to quit smoking is not cheap, but local authorities are having a great impact with constrained resources. On average, local authorities across England spend £936 per successful quitter. Some local authorities have had a great deal of success while maintaining a very low cost per quitter. For example Dorset spends just  £86 per successful quitter. Interestingly, one of the top five locations for successful quit smoking rates, Essex, also has one of the lowest levels of spending per successful quitter, at just £151.

Signposts of success

So why are the top 5 local authorities having higher rates of success when it comes to helping people to quit smoking? We gathered information on the different types of support each council offers to people trying to quit smoking to understand what is contributing to their success:  

Your journey

The journey to quit smoking is rarely easy. We know that many people may not succeed on their first try. The important thing is to keep your eyes on the prize and try, try again. These are some of our top tips to help you on your journey.

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Markus Lindblad Published 2024-12-06

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