Website of the Department of Health

• Last modified date:
  29 October 2008

Services are provided in group sessions or one to one, depending on the local circumstances and client's preferences. Most stop smoking advisers are nurses or pharmacists, and all have received training for their role.

£138m was made available to the Services over the three years 2003 -2006 (£41m/£46m/£51m).

To build on the continued success of the services, a further £112 million for the two years 2006/07 - 2007/08 has been allocated to Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), including an additional £10 million heavily weighted towards spearhead PCTs.

The Government has made stop smoking aids available on NHS prescription (bupropion (Zyban) June 2000 and NRT April 2001). The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has issued guidance on the use of NRT and bupropion (Zyban) and the role of counselling and support. In 2004 around 2 million prescriptions for NRT were dispensed worth a total value of around £44 million. NRT or Zyban doubles the chances of a smoker successfully quitting and use has increased substantially year on year.

The Department of Health funded an evaluation of the NHS Stop Smoking Services programme, which was carried out by a team led by Glasgow University. The evaluation included an overview of the development and staffing of services, an analysis of characteristics associated with the more successful services, conclusions on the targeting of disadvantaged smokers, a summary of cost effectiveness, and a pilot study of long term effectiveness which looks at the extent to which smokers who successfully quit smoking after four weeks are still not smoking after a year.

The main findings were that:

This means that a smoker who tries to quit with the NHS Stop Smoking Service and NRT/Zyban is up to four times as likely to succeed than by willpower alone.

The evaluation was published in a special supplement of the Journal Addiction in April 2005 - see link below.