Statistics on Women's Smoking Status at Time of Delivery: England, Q4 2024/25

Annual comparison

For SATOD v1, 6.1% of pregnant women were known to be smokers at the time of delivery in 2024-25.  This is a decrease from 7.4% in 2023-24. SATOD v2 figures are in close proximity with 5.6% of pregnant women known to be smokers at the time of delivery in 2024-25, and a similar decrease from 7.2% in 2023-24.

Quarterly comparison

For SATOD v1, 6.0% of pregnant women were known to be smokers at the time of delivery during quarter 4 of 2024-25.  This is a very small increase from 5.9% in the previous quarter. For SATOD v2,  5.1% of pregnant women were known to be smokers at the time of delivery in quarter 4 of 2024-25, with a decrease from 5.5% in the previous quarter. This is the first time that quarterly estimates have diverged from each other in relation to the previous quarter, but are still in close proximity. This is due to a number of data quality issues being reported for quarter 4 for SATOD v1, such as new electronic health record systems being implemented. Please see the SATOD v1 DQ Table 1 and Table 2 in the Excel data file for further information. It is likely that these estimates may not have diverged if it hadn't been for such issues. 

The chart below shows a time series comparison, for SATOD v1 and v2, of the percentage of women smoking at time of delivery. SATOD v2 figures are only available from 2022-23 due to data quality issues for earlier quarters.

The time series estimates from both sources are in very close proximity indicating that MSDS is a good replacement as the data source for this publication.

Based on SATOD v1, in quarter 4 of 2024-2025, the lowest proportions of women known to be smokers at time of delivery were in NHS North West London ICB - W2U3Z (1.5%), NHS Suffolk and North East Essex ICB - 07K (2.6%), NHS North East London ICB - A3A8R (2.7%), NHS Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB - 03W (2.9%), NHS South West London ICB - 36L (3.0%), NHS South East London ICB - 72Q (3.1%), NHS Mid and South Essex ICB - 99F (3.3%), NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB - 02E (3.4%) and NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB - 02G (3.5%).

Those with the highest were NHS Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB - 92G (27.9%), NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB - 03F (14.9%), NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB - 03H (13.5%) and NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB - 03K (13.4%). There is alignment with the SATOD v2 estimates with these figures.

Data was received from all Sub-ICBs for quarter 4. 

An additional visualisation of this data, including time series, is available at the link below: