Strategy and vision

It’s important for local areas to have a local ambition for tobacco control, articulated in a vision or strategy.

In areas such as the North East where they have a regional ambition, all localities have individually committed and signed-up to this ambition.

In areas where there aren’t regional tobacco control structures, local authorities should use their local data and experience to articulate local strategies and prevalence reduction targets.

Considering timing when developing your strategy is important. If you are establishing an alliance and want to engage new partners in writing the strategy or are looking for partners’ input with an update, thinking about how this fits into broader council and organisational timeframes will be important for engagement.

There is real variety in how local authorities set out their strategies and how they collaborate to produce these; below are some local and regional examples.

• Local authorities in the North East – led by Fresh – and Yorkshire and Humber – led by Breathe 2025 – have signed up to the shared target of achieving 5% smoking prevalence by 2025.
• Greater Manchester’s Making Smoking History Strategy aims to reduce prevalence by a third by 2021.

• Lancashire’s ‘Tobacco Free Strategy’* covers the three local authorities of Lancashire, Blackburn and Darwen and Blackpool Councils, working on a cross-boundary footprint.
• Buckinghamshire County Council’s ‘Towards a Smokefree Generation’ strategy sets five year targets for 2019 – 2024.
• Swindon’s Tobacco Control Strategy sets a prevalence target for being below the national average by 2022

*N.B. Lancashire’s strategy links to an old ADPH position on e-cigarettes; an updated version is available here.

ASH and Fresh have published a strategic guide for local areas, The End of Smoking, highlighting where local strategies should focus and setting out the three key components for local prevalence reduction:

• Reducing uptake
• Increasing the number of quit attempts among current smokers
• Improving the success of quit attempts and preventing relapse

Local plans should include activity in each of these areas to ensure appropriate support is reaching all smokers in your local population, and not just those engaging with formal services.

For an overview of prevalence reduction and how it works, check out this video from Professor Robert West at University College London.

• Association of Directors of Public Health & Public Health England: What Good Tobacco Control Looks Like
• Local Government Association & Cancer Research UK: Must Know Guide: Tobacco Control

• A range of local authorities use the priorities and targets set out in the Tobacco Control Plan for England as the basis for their own strategies and local targets.
• PHE’s Tobacco Commissioning Support Pack: principles and indictors.
• Mapping against the commitments of the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control or NHS Smokefree Pledge.
• The Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) support pack can be used to assess local tobacco control needs and develop a comprehensive tobacco control strategy which meets these.
• Using the CLeaR self or peer assessment process to identify local strengths and weaknesses.