Five English councils have introduced a ban on smoking on pavements outside pubs, cafes and restaurants where outside seating is available.
Manchester, Newcastle , Northumberland, Durham and North Tyneside have all banned smoking and all new licenses granted by Gateshead council now stipulate that outside areas must be smoke-free.
Closer to home, Oxfordshire is considering the move. An Oxfordshire County Council spokesperson saying: “Oxfordshire has set itself an ambitious aim to be smoke-free by 2025. Creating healthy, smoke-free environments – including considering proposals for hospitality outdoor seating to be 100 per cent smoke-free – is just one small part of a wider range of county-wide plans.
“At present there are no timeframes for smoke-free pavement licensing proposals and nothing has yet been agreed. Any decision on this would be ultimately the responsibility of our individual district councils in Oxfordshire.”
Blackpool Council were the first council to introduce restrictions on smoking outdoors in 2012 when the council declared a number of parks in the town were “designated smokefree sites”.
A Swindon Borough Council spokesperson said: “We have always had a smoke-free area element to our smoking strategy for Swindon and have been applying this with a targeted approach.
“Some examples of success include the smoke-free areas in Swindon’s bus station and working with Parish Councils to encourage smoke-free play parks.
“Prior to COVID-19 we began work on looking at smoke-free district centres, with a particular focus on new developments, and hope to pick this work up again very soon.”
