NHS stop smoking services quarterly
Local Delivery Plan standard, 2024/25 (quarter 4)

About this release

This quarterly release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents information from January to March 2025 on NHS Stop Smoking Services in Scotland and health boards’ progress towards their annual Local Delivery Plan (LDP) Standard. The LDP Standard for NHS Scotland in 2024/25 is to achieve at least 7,026 self-reported successful twelve-week quits (those people who have abstained from smoking for 12 weeks) through smoking cessation services in the 40% most deprived areas (60% in NHS Island Boards). This release is also supported by an interactive dashboard that allows for more detailed breakdowns of smoking quit attempts.

Main points

• In the period January to March 2025, NHS Scotland achieved 90% (1,585 quits out of 1,757) of a quarter of the annual LDP standard.
• In the financial year 2024/25, NHS Scotland achieved 76% (5,352 quits out of 7,026) of the required annual LDP standard

Bar graph of NHS Health Board performance against the LDP Standard.

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Scotland and NHS Board performance against the LDP Standard at end of Quarter 4 (Q4)

• At the end of March 2025, 1 out of 14 NHS Boards have met or exceeded their annual LDP Standard. NHS Board performance against their annual LDP Standard ranged from 18% to 125%.
• In the period January to March 2025 individuals from the 40% most deprived areas (60% in island boards) accessing non-pharmacy services were recorded as still not smoking after 12 weeks at a rate of 49% and those accessing pharmacy-based services were recorded as still not smoking after 12 weeks at a rate of 22%.

Please see the Stop Smoking Services Dashboard or the Data Tables for more information on these main points (Data Tables A1, B3, and B4 for Annual LDP target and Quarterly LDP achievement, and Data Tables C4 for pharmacy / non-pharmacy activity).

Background

Smoking cessation services in Scotland are delivered as specialist services that offer structured behavioural support delivered in groups or in one-to-one sessions and are often provided together with licensed pharmacotherapy (nicotine replacement therapy or bupropion). This support is delivered by specially trained staff in a variety of NHS and non-NHS settings. There are also pharmacy based smoking cessation services, which complements the specialist smoking cessation services and provides a course of advice and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) over a period of up to 12 weeks. More information can be found on the NHS Inform site.  

In July 2005 a national smoking cessation database was set up to capture data on people presenting to NHS services in Scotland for help to stop smoking. This database collects the mandatory service user information required for national monitoring purposes for smoking cessation services from all 14 NHS Boards in Scotland. This information has been used to generate this report.  

The Local Delivery Plan for NHS boards was designed to embed and sustain successful smoking quits at 12 weeks post quit in the 40 per cent most deprived SIMD areas (60 per cent in the Island Boards). The annual target was set that 1.5% of smokers in these areas would have a self-reported successful twelve-week quit (have abstained from smoking for 12 weeks) through smoking cessation services. For NHSScotland this was set at 7,026 12-week quits in 2019/20. Due to the impacts of COVID-19 this has not been updated since 2019/20, and the target has been maintained at 7,026 for 2024/25.

The figures presented here on quit attempts include only those attempted through NHS stop smoking services and do not include those attempted through private services or self-led attempts. Figures are based on total quit attempts set during the year, rather than total number of people with a recorded quit attempt, so could include repeat quit attempts for the same person. More detailed information on quit attempts can also be found within the NHS Stop Smoking Services Scotland annual report.

For this release the ethnicity categories were updated to match those used in the 2022 census. As part of this update, it was noted that due to some new 2022 census categories not being counted for figures published to date for quarters 1-3 2024/25 the categories 'White' and 'Caribbean or Black' were undercounted, while the category 'Prefer not to say' was overcounted. Additionally, a historic misallocation of a census 2011 category meant that for the time period covered (2014/15 to present) figures for 'Caribbean or Black' were undercounted while the category 'Asian, Asian Scottish, Asian British' was overcounted. This has been corrected in this release. More information can be found on the dashboard. 

Further information

The next release of this publication will be December 2025.