Havering Council's Tobacco Harm Reduction Strategy 2024-2029

We carried out a consultation between 17 February and 31 March 2025 to seek views on Havering’s draft Tobacco Harm Reduction Strategy 2024-2029.

Smoking is the leading cause of avoidable ill health such as cancer, heart and lung disease and also results in premature deaths.  The Council has been working in partnership with numerous health and social care professionals and community organisations to develop a strategy to address tobacco and vape harm in Havering.

The strategy aims to focus on local challenges and to reduce both tobacco and vape harm in the borough over the next five years in line with the national ambition of creating a smoke-free society by 2030

The development of the draft strategy has been led by the Council’s Public Health Service, working with service areas across the Council alongside a Tobacco Harm Reduction Partnership Group which includes members and stakeholders from the Integrated Care Board (ICB), the National Health Service (NHS), the North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT), healthcare partners and the voluntary and community sector.

Various groups and partners such as the Tobacco Harm Reduction Partnership group (which includes NHS Partners), stop smoking services, HealthWatch, and Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PHSE) Leads were engaged in the consultation design and methods to ensure questions reflect strategy priorities and were clear and relevant.

We asked respondents to share their views on these four priority areas:

• Prevention – empowerment not to smoke or vape
• Supporting smokers to quit and reducing smoking variation
• Creating smoke-free environments
• Regulation and enforcement

125 responses were received to the online consultation:

• 90% of responses came from Havering residents and 10% were from people who either worked in Havering or represented a charity or community group.
• 20% of these respondents were parents and 2% were young people, aged under 18.
• The highest number of responses came from people between the ages of 55-74 years.
• 79% of respondents agreed with the four priorities identified in the strategy, with ‘Supporting smokers to quit’ and ‘Preventing uptake of smoking and vaping (amongst young people)’ being slightly more supported than ‘Creating smoke-free environments’ or ‘Strengthening regulation and enforcement’.

Priorities

Your comments on priorities were categorised into the following Key themes:

• Choice to smoke/vape
• Smoke-free environments
• Enforcement/Licensing of cigarettes and vapes
• Focus on substance misuse
• Education

Children and young people were most frequently identified as a priority group, followed by people from diverse ethnic backgrounds and individuals who use drugs, including cannabis.

Your feedback has been taken into account and we have updated the Strategy to reflect your input in the following ways:

We have renamed the priority group from ‘Young People’ to ‘Children and Young People’ to better reflect the age range and focus.

We have strengthened our commitments for address smoking and vaping among children and young people. These include:

• Partnering with parents to raise awareness of the harms of smoking and vaping.
• Signposting parents who smoke to local stop smoking services, helping reduce second-hand and third-hand smoke exposure at home.
• Collaborating with youth groups and professionals in Havering to co-create relevant resources and campaigns.

We expanded our Enforcement and Regulation priority to include:

• Working with Licensing and Trading Standards teams to ensure premises comply with their issued licenses.

Havering's Cabinet met on 11 June 2025 and approved the Havering Tobacco Harm Reduction Strategy 2024-2029 for implementation.

Please see the full Public Document Pack Here