NHS Stop Smoking Services Scotland
April 2023 to March 2024
Accredited official statistics
- Published
- 17 December 2024 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
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 2023 to March 2024, including trend data from 2014/15. This release is supplemented by an interactive dashboard and Excel workbook.
Main points
- In 2023/34 the number of attempts to stop smoking made with the help of NHS smoking cessation services increased to 30,314, a 12.4% increase from 2022/23 (26,963).
- Of those making a quit attempt 44.6% (13,517) reported still not smoking at four weeks into the measured quit attempt period. This fell to 28.9% (8,757) at twelve weeks.
- Of the 13,517 self-reported four-week quits 15.6% (2,113) were validated as not smoking through carbon monoxide (CO) testing and 2.4% (329) were confirmed as smoking. 81.9% (11,075) had no CO reading taken, or the result was unknown.
- The Local Delivery Plan (LDP) Standard for NHS Scotland in 2023/24 is to achieve at least 7,026 self-reported successful twelve-week quits through smoking cessation services in the 40% most deprived areas. In 2023/24, NHS Scotland achieved 73.9% (5,191 out of 7,026) of the required annual LDP Standard. This is a 4.2 percentage point increase on the equivalent figure of 69.7% in 2022/23.
- Two out of fourteen NHS Boards met or exceeded their annual LDP Standard during 2023/24. NHS Board performances against their annual LDP Standards varied considerably, ranging from 39.5% to 128.0
Background
The national smoking cessation database is designed to collect the national minimum dataset from smoking cessation services and is used by all 14 NHS Boards in Scotland. 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.
The report appendix contains more detail on how quit attempts are calculated. The NHS Stop Smoking services quarterly report contains more information on progress to the LDP standard throughout the year.
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 2025/26.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact Scott Kilgariff at phs.smokingcessation@phs.scot.
Media enquiries
If you have a media enquiry relating to this publication, please contact the Communications and Engagement team.
Requesting other formats and reporting issues
If you require publications or documents in other formats, please email phs.otherformats@phs.scot.
To report any issues with a publication, please email phs.generalpublications@phs.scot.
Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.