Decision details

To allocate £64,289 of the North Yorkshire Smokefree Generation grant from the Department of Health and Social Care, to the regional Centre for Excellence for Tobacco Control hosted by the Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership. The decision was made in consultation with the Assistant Director Resources and Executive Member Health and Adult Services.

The Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership has identified addressing the harm caused by tobacco as a key priority. This is also a key public health priority for North Yorkshire Council. The Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership has established a Centre for Excellence (Tobacco Control) in collaboration with local government to work at scale, to support people to stop smoking across the county. Local Government has received national funding with the aim of achieving a Smokefree Generation. As part of the investment plan for the North Yorkshire share of the national funding, it is proposed to make an investment into the Centre for Excellence for Tobacco Control.

At HAS Executive on 11th July 2025, a Key Decision was made to enable the Local Authority to accept this additional grant funding for the current financial year (2025-26). As part of this Key Decision process, the Executive Member for Health and Adult Services was briefed around the proposed spend plan for the second year of this funding. This spend plan included 10% of the allocation for North Yorkshire being allocated to the Centre for Excellence for Tobacco Control for work across the Yorkshire and Humber region.

The aim of investing in the Centre for Excellence for Tobacco Control is to maximise impact through targeted interventions and population-wide initiatives aims to reduce inequalities caused by smoking by focusing on at-risk populations, as well as driving population quits at scale. The interventions include:
• launching a Mass Media TV Stop Smoking Quit Campaign to increase motivation to quit across Humber and North Yorkshire. This includes the allocation of funding towards TV-led multimedia campaigns throughout the year.
• The procurement of the Stop Smoking App licenses to grant access to individuals from across the Yorkshire and the Humber looking to quit, directed to this app via the mass media campaign.
The investments will prioritise targeted interventions, population-wide campaigns, and workforce development to support the achievement of the 5% national target of smoking prevalence by 2030.