NHS Stop Smoking Services Scotland
April 2022 to March 2023

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides an annual update on statistics from NHS Stop Smoking Services in Scotland for the period April 2022 to March 2023, including trend data from 2013/14. There have been some revisions to data previously reported during 2013/14 to 2019/20 due to changes in deprivation and urban/rural classifications. These revisions have no material impact on the trends presented or the conclusions drawn from this series of reports (please see Appendix 2 - Publication metadata for further details of the changes). This release is supplemented by a dashboard and Excel workbook.

Main points

• In 2022/23, the number of attempts to stop smoking made with the help of NHS smoking cessation services fell for the eleventh consecutive year to 26,954. This is a 14.1% reduction from 2021/22.

• In 2022/23, of those making a quit attempt 46.2% (12,444) reported that they were still not smoking at four weeks. This figure fell to 30.1% (8,119) at twelve weeks.
• In the financial year 2022/23, NHS Scotland achieved 69.4% (4,877 out of 7,026) of the required annual LDP Standard.
• Two out of fourteen NHS Boards met or exceeded their annual LDP Standard during the financial year 2022/23. NHS Board performances against their annual LDP Standards ranged from 36.8% to 144.7%.

Background

The national smoking cessation database is designed to collect the national minimum dataset for smoking cessation services and is used by all 14 NHS Boards in Scotland. Information about service activity and outcomes from pharmacy services is recorded through the smoking cessation support tool available in the Pharmacy Care Record. This forms part of the minimum dataset, which is electronically submitted from Pharmacy Care Record to the national smoking cessation database.

Statistics are based on total ‘quit attempts’ made during the year, rather than total number of people with a quit attempt, so may include repeat quit attempts for the same person.

It is important to note that the statistics being reported in this release include the period when Scotland was facing the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, smoking cessation services changed their service delivery model. This included stopping both face-to-face appointments and verifying quits using carbon monoxide monitor validation. Therefore, caution should be applied when comparing results for 2020/21 and subsequent years to those for previous years.

Further information

Open data from this publication is available from the Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data platform.

The next release of this publication will be Winter 2025.