About Us

Who are Smokefree South West?

Smokefree South West is an organisation funded by all 14 Primary Care Trusts in the area to reduce smoking rates in the South West and make tobacco use less desirable and accessible.
We are focused on what will have the biggest impact on smoking rates in the South West. These include but are not limited to:

  • Rolling out a programme to all acute and foundation trusts to ensure that all patients, staff and visitors are offered the opportunity to stop smoking whilst in hospital or on a hospital site
  • Developing and running a campaign to halve the number of adults in the South West who allow smoking in their home by 2015 from the current 20% to 10%
  • Developing and running a campaign to prompt 40% of our 480,000 smokers of hand rolling tobacco to make a quit attempt in the year following the campaign
  • Increasing the number of pharmacies offering stop smoking support
  • Delivering a South of England Tackling Illegal Tobacco for Better Health Action Plan, working with key partners to reduce the supply and demand of illegal tobacco.

Smokefree South West is endorsed in Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Tobacco Control Plan for England:
“In the future, local areas may wish to commission and deliver tobacco control initiatives over larger geographical areas, in order to achieve greater levels of effectiveness and efficiency. Tobacco control offices in the North West, North East and South West of England have demonstrated the value of such models of working for many years, particularly around, marketing communications and tackling illicit tobacco.”

As a collectively commissioned body we are able to:

  • Offer economies of scale of up to 40% when delivering behaviour change campaigns;
  • Use effective evaluation and research to deliver evidence-based interventions to address tobacco control issues;
  • Engage with partners at a strategic level and enable local areas to adopt a cost-effective approach;
  • Tackle both the supply and demand of illegal tobacco by catalysing a significant increase in partnership working.