Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services in England - April 2022 to March 2023 (Q4, Annual)

NHS Stop Smoking Services were first set up in 1999/2000 with the aim of reducing health inequalities and improving health among local populations.

Services were rolled out across England from 2000/01 and provide free, tailored support to all smokers wishing to stop by offering a combination of recommended stop smoking pharmacotherapies and behavioural support.

This report presents statistics from Stop Smoking Services in England for the period April 2022 to March 2023 and is supplemented by Excel tables, and CSV data files.

It supersedes the provisional results previously published for quarters 1, 2 and 3 in 2022/23.

Information is presented at national, regional and local authority (LA) level including some time series data.  Information is also shown by age, gender and ethnicity.

A number of LAs submitted incomplete data. More information is available in Table 4.3b of the accompanying Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services April 2022 to March 2023 tables.

No estimation has been made for missing data and therefore national and regional totals which appear in this report will be underestimates.

A self-reported quitter is defined as a treated smoker who reports not smoking for at least days 15-28 of a quit attempt and is followed up 28 days from their quit date. Further to this, a self-reported quitter is considered to be CO-verified if their CO reading is assessed 28 days from their quit date and is less than 10 parts per million (ppm). For further details, please refer to the accompanying appendices.

In 2022/23, 176,566 people accessed NHS Stop Smoking Services and set a quit date.

In the same period, there were 95,400 self-reported quitters. Of these, 13,956 were CO-verified.

The self-reported quit rate was 54% which is lower than in 2021/22 (55%) but higher than some previous years. Since 2010/11 the rate has ranged between 49% and 59%.

Due to the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) disruption, there was a sharp decline in the number of CO validations carried out in 2020/21, as they are usually done face to face with a health professional. Consequently, the CO validation rate dropped from 32% in 2019/20 to just 2% in 2020/21. The percentage of those setting a quit date being CO validated in 2022/23 was 8%. While the rate is still lower than before the pandemic, the proportion of those setting a quit date being CO validated seems to be increasing.