LGA submission to DHSC’s consultation on smoke-free, heated tobacco-free and vape-free places in England, May 2026

The LGA is the national membership body for local government in England. We represent over 340 councils and work on their behalf to support and promote local government. Councils are central to the delivery of public health in England. Statutory directors of public health sit within local authorities, the public health grant funds a wide range of tobacco control, stop smoking, and harm reduction services, and environmental health officers employed by councils are the frontline professionals who enforce smokefree legislation day to day. Councils therefore have a direct and enduring stake in the proposals set out in this consultation, both as system leaders for population health and as the bodies responsible for making new regulations work on the ground.

Our response sets out areas of agreement and highlights a number of practical concerns that will need to be addressed if implementation is to be effective, equitable, and financially sustainable for local government.

Children's playgrounds

We agree with the proposal to make public children's playgrounds smoke-free. This is consistent with the direction of travel in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill and with the long-standing efforts of councils to protect children from tobacco exposure and to denormalise smoking in family-facing public spaces. Many councils have already implemented smokefree playgrounds voluntarily, and a national requirement will provide consistency and a stronger basis for enforcement.

However, we have significant concerns about the scope of the definition. The current proposal is limited to playgrounds with council involvement. This excludes a growing number of play areas constructed as part of new housing developments that are not formally adopted by the council. These spaces are entirely open to the public and heavily used by children, yet would fall outside the scope of this provision. We strongly recommend that the Government extend the definition to include all publicly accessible playgrounds, regardless of ownership or adoption status.

Children also regularly use playgrounds in national parks, country parks, amusement parks and privately operated leisure settings. Excluding these creates unnecessary inconsistency and leaves gaps in child protection. National consistency across setting types would support the broader goal of reducing smoking visibility in child-centred spaces.

Health and care settings

We agree in principle with making outdoor areas of health and care settings smoke-free. Protecting patients, staff, and visitors from tobacco exposure in health settings is both proportionate and overdue. Councils, as the employers of many public health professionals and as system partners with NHS trusts and primary care, are well placed to support implementation.

We do, however, want to flag the risk of displacement. Extending smokefree boundaries can concentrate smoking at site perimeters, particularly at entrances and access points. We have heard consistently from councils that this creates a wall of smoke and vapour that patients with respiratory and cardiac conditions must pass through when entering and leaving buildings. Boundary design, enforcement guidance, and signage placement will all need to address this risk directly.

List of health and care settings

We agree that the proposed list of health and care settings is broadly comprehensive and appropriately drawn. We welcome the exemptions for residential care settings, which reflect a necessary balance between resident autonomy and the duty to protect staff and visitors from harm. Councils with social care responsibilities will be familiar with navigating exactly this tension, and we support enabling providers to exercise local discretion within a clear national framework.

Education settings

We agree with the proposals for smoke-free outdoor areas in education settings, and with the proposed list of settings. Many councils have developed smokefree school gates initiatives as part of their tobacco control strategies, and a national requirement will reinforce these efforts and extend their reach. Reducing the visibility of smoking at school entrances supports the long-term goal of preventing children from initiating tobacco use.

We agree with the proposed list of education settings. Consistency with local initiatives already operating in this space will be important, and we would welcome guidance that acknowledges and builds on existing local programmes.

We agree with the proposal to allow exemptions for residential settings including care homes, assisted living, hospices, mental health residential facilities, and residential schools, enabling managers or the person in charge to designate a smoking area.

This is the right approach. Councils have direct experience of the complexity of these settings. Residents in long-term care, hospices and mental health facilities often have high levels of nicotine dependence, and any approach that fails to account for their circumstances risks being experienced as punitive. The ability for managers to exercise local discretion within a defined framework is appropriate.

That said, exemptions need to be accompanied by clear safeguards. Any designated outdoor smoking area must comply with existing legal requirements for smoking shelters. Poor siting risks creating exposure problems for others using the site, including staff, visitors, and residents who do not smoke. Design guidance should make clear that shelters should be positioned to prevent drift into high-footfall areas, entrances, and shared outdoor spaces.

Equally important is that exemptions should not displace the responsibility to support residents to stop smoking or reduce their dependence. Settings operating exemptions should be expected to ensure access to evidence-based stop smoking support, delivered in a way that respects personal autonomy and individual circumstances. The long-term ambition for all settings should be a fully smokefree outdoor environment that supports health improvement rather than merely managing tobacco use.

We would also make clear that any outdoor smoking exemption in residential settings should apply to residents only. Visitors and staff do not reside on site and should not be routinely exposed to secondhand smoke as a condition of their visit or employment. Guidance should make this explicit and consistent across all exempted settings.

We agree with all the proposals to extend smokefree rules to heated tobacco products across indoor and outdoor settings. Aligning heated tobacco with smoked tobacco in law will simplify enforcement, reduce confusion, and close a gap that has existed since heated tobacco products entered the market.

Heated tobacco products continue to produce harmful emissions. Councils have a direct interest in ensuring that staff, residents, and service users are protected from exposure in health and care, education, and public settings. Bringing these products within the same regulatory framework maintains a clear and coherent approach to reducing nicotine-related harm.

We agree with the proposal to align heated tobacco exemptions with indoor smoke-free and proposed outdoor smoke-free exemptions. Applying a consistent approach across smoked and heated tobacco products supports clarity for providers, residents, and enforcement bodies.

As with smoke-free exemptions, we would emphasise the importance of siting and oversight for any designated heated tobacco areas. The same concerns about displacement and exposure apply. Settings choosing to allow designated heated tobacco areas should be expected to maintain clear local policies and to support residents toward cessation or harm reduction where they wish to do so. Exemptions should be a managed exception, not a default position.

We agree with all the proposals to make indoor and outdoor places vape-free. The current inconsistency between vaping and smoking rules has created practical difficulties for businesses, providers, and enforcement teams. Aligning the two frameworks will support clearer and more consistent enforcement, and will help address the nuisance caused by dense vape aerosol emissions in enclosed and semi-enclosed spaces.

We support making public children's playgrounds vape-free. Many councils already promote smokefree and vape-free play spaces as part of their tobacco control and health improvement strategies. National consistency will support and strengthen these efforts.

We agree with the proposals for vape-free outdoor areas in education settings and with the proposed list of settings. This aligns with the smokefree school gates and healthy school neighbourhoods work being delivered by councils. Visible vaping at school entrances sends unhelpful signals to children and young people, and reducing that visibility is an important component of a whole-community approach to prevention.

We would note that councils are increasingly investing in smokefree and vape-free sports sidelines initiatives and other community-facing tobacco control programmes. These proposals complement that direction of travel and will help normalise higher expectations in shared public spaces.

We agree with the proposed exemptions for vape-free places, including the indoor exemptions for smoking cessation services and mental health residential facilities. These are sensible and proportionate.

The exemption for smoking cessation services is particularly important. Vaping is a licensed and recommended cessation tool. A rigid vape-free rule that applies within cessation services would risk undermining the very interventions the Government is seeking to scale. Giving managers discretion to designate a vaping area within cessation settings is the right approach.

We would, however, recommend that the exemption is extended to cover services commissioned by a local authority or NHS body, not only those directly delivered. In practice, most local stop smoking services are delivered by third-party providers working under contract to councils or NHS commissioners. Limiting the exemption to directly delivered services would create an arbitrary and operationally unworkable distinction that councils would find difficult to explain to their commissioned providers and that could undermine the very services they fund.

As with the smoke-free and heated tobacco exemptions, we would stress the importance of ensuring that designated vaping areas in residential settings are carefully sited and managed, and that they sit alongside active support for residents to reduce their reliance on nicotine products where that is their wish.

Of the three approaches proposed, we consider Approach 2, which applies a site boundary plus a 10-metre perimeter around access points, to be our preferred option. It addresses the displacement risk at entrances without creating an excessively broad enforcement zone across the surrounding area. A 10-metre buffer at key access points is proportionate and practicable for enforcement teams.

We recognise, however, that there is a strong enforcement case for Approach 3, which relies on the site boundary alone. Measurement-based requirements have historically generated legal ambiguity and enforcement difficulty, as was experienced with smoking shelter distances under the Health Act 2006. Environmental health officers, who will be responsible for enforcing these provisions, have drawn that lesson clearly. We acknowledge that Approach 3 may prove more operationally deliverable and we could support it, provided the Government produces clear guidance on boundary definition for settings without obvious physical demarcation.

Whichever approach is adopted, unambiguous guidance developed with council enforcement teams will be essential to remove scope for legal challenge and ensure consistent application across the full range of settings involved.

We agree with the proposed approach for settings without a clear site boundary, using an equivalent of 10 metres from play equipment or buildings. Guidance should specify clearly which point of reference is to be used for measurement. Councils should not be expected to create physical markings on the ground to reinforce this boundary where doing so would affect the character or status of a site, for example listed buildings or open parkland. Signage requirements remain appropriate regardless.

Indoor signage

On reflection, we recommend that the Government mandates minimum standards for signage design, size, and wording for both indoor and outdoor settings, rather than leaving this entirely to the discretion of duty holders. Environmental health officers drew a clear lesson from the 2006 Act: where signage requirements are ambiguous or flexible, enforcement becomes disproportionately difficult. Officers find themselves on the receiving end of creative interpretations of compliance that are technically defensible but practically worthless. A minimum standard removes that ambiguity, creates a level playing field for duty holders who want to comply, and ensures that signage is accessible to people with visual impairments or different language needs. Flexibility around placement is entirely appropriate, but the core design standard should be fixed.

The Government should also ensure that signage requirements are consistent across indoor and outdoor settings. Sites with both indoor and outdoor areas subject to the new provisions will need a coherent approach, and inconsistency between the two regimes will generate confusion for duty holders and the public alike.

Outdoor areas with a clear boundary

We agree with the proposal for signage at access points to clearly defined outdoor areas. Signage at entrances is essential so that members of the public understand the rules before entering. We would note that sites with multiple access points will need to plan carefully for the number and placement of signs. Guidance on maintenance, durability, and enforcement of signage requirements will help ensure compliance remains practicable.

Outdoor areas without a clear boundary

We agree with the approach for areas without a defined boundary. Positioning signs near key features such as play equipment or buildings provides a practical anchor point. Guidance should make clear that signage should be proportionate to site size, with sufficient coverage to ensure visibility without over-signing the space. Councils will need to work with site managers to develop local approaches that are appropriate for the diversity of settings involved.

We would recommend that the requirements for designated smoking, heated tobacco, and vaping areas under exemptions should align with existing regulations for smoking shelters. This provides a clear and established baseline without introducing additional complexity.

In practice, a single shelter sub-divided to accommodate separate smoking and vaping areas where both are permitted would be a proportionate and workable approach in most residential settings. Clear guidance on minimum distances from buildings, entrances, footpaths, and shared outdoor spaces will be essential.

Poorly sited designated areas will create unintended consequences for the wider site and adjacent public areas. The location of shelters is critical. A shelter positioned close to an entrance or a public footpath will concentrate tobacco and aerosol exposure precisely where it is most likely to affect the greatest number of people. Guidance should emphasise that siting decisions must genuinely minimise exposure for non-users, including for passers-by and for councils' own responsibilities as street cleaning authorities for adjacent public realm.

We broadly support an implementation period of no less than six months. However, we would urge the Government to consider whether this is sufficient time for councils and local providers to prepare adequately, particularly in settings where workforce training, signage procurement, enforcement protocols, and resident communications will all be required simultaneously.

We would recommend that implementation guidance is made available to councils well in advance of any commencement date, and that it is developed in partnership with the LGA, the Association of Directors of Public Health, and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Environmental health officers will be central to making these regulations work. They need clear, practical guidance that reflects the full diversity of settings they will encounter, and they need it early enough to prepare. Early engagement with the public health grant settlement cycle will also be important to ensure that councils have the resources to deliver their responsibilities from day one.

We would specifically draw attention to the implications of ongoing local government reorganisation. A number of councils are currently in the process of merging functions, restructuring regulatory teams, and establishing new enforcement arrangements. Implementing new regulatory requirements during this period of organisational change places additional strain on environmental health capacity. The Government should build flexibility into the implementation timeline for councils undergoing reorganisation and should engage with the LGA to identify where longer lead-in periods are warranted for specific areas.

Costs to local government

We welcome the recognition of local authorities as enforcement bodies in the impact assessment. However, the assessment as currently drafted significantly underestimates the full costs of these proposals on councils. In particular, it does not adequately account for the role of local authorities as street cleaning and waste management authorities. This is a material omission.

Extending smoke-free, heated tobacco-free, and vape-free restrictions will inevitably displace some smoking and vaping to site boundaries and surrounding public areas. In practice, this means cigarette butts, heated tobacco waste, and disposable vape litter accumulating just outside restricted zones on public footpaths, in parks, and around entrances to health and education buildings. Clearing this waste falls to council cleansing teams, not enforcement staff, and represents a direct and ongoing operational cost.

We estimate that these costs, while variable by geography, will include increased cleansing frequency in affected areas, higher volumes of non-recyclable waste particularly from disposable vaping products, and additional resource demand in terms of staff time, equipment, and waste management. None of this is currently reflected in the impact assessment.

We would also challenge the uniform cost assumptions applied to local authority enforcement in the impact assessment. EHO hourly rates vary significantly across England, reflecting regional pay differences, London weighting, and local market supplements. These variations are material in any prosecution scenario, where officer time is recoverable at cost. Some councils also apply substantial on-costs, including PPE, software, and management overhead, on top of base salary rates. A realistic enforcement cost assessment must account for this regional variation. We recommend that DHSC works with the LGA and CIEH to develop a more granular costing model before final regulations are made.

New Burdens Funding

The Government's New Burdens Doctrine requires that all new statutory duties placed on local authorities be fully funded. The LGA is clear that the additional responsibilities flowing from these proposals, including familiarisation, enforcement, advisory, and cleansing activities, constitute new burdens on councils.

The impact assessment identifies familiarisation costs to local authorities of around £57,000. We consider this figure to be a minimum, and strongly recommend that it is provided as New Burdens Funding. However, the assessment does not reflect ongoing enforcement and advisory costs, nor the street cleaning implications described above. A fuller assessment of recurring costs, developed in dialogue with councils, is needed before final regulations are made.

We would also highlight the need to clarify the definition of council involvement in relation to play areas. Many councils operate a range of models including fully owned and managed, owned but managed by a third party, and play areas provided by developers under planning obligations that are open to the public but not formally adopted. The current drafting risks creating inconsistency in the scope of the duty and confusion about which local authority has responsibility for enforcement in each case. The Government should work with councils to develop a definition that is comprehensive, unambiguous, and operationally deliverable.

Health benefits

We support the direction of travel in the impact assessment's analysis of health benefits. Reducing exposure to secondhand smoke in outdoor settings, particularly for children, patients in health settings, and pupils in education settings, will generate long-term population health gains. Councils are well placed to contribute evidence on local smoking prevalence, tobacco-related hospital admissions, and the performance of existing tobacco control interventions to support a more granular assessment of anticipated benefits.

We would also recommend that the impact assessment considers the potential contribution of these measures to reducing health inequalities. Smoking rates remain highest among the most deprived communities, and consistent smokefree norms in public spaces have a documented role in supporting cessation and reducing uptake in high-prevalence groups. Capturing this dimension in the assessment would strengthen the overall case for the proposals.

In summary, the LGA supports the proposals in this consultation and welcomes the Government's commitment to extending smokefree protections. We ask that the Government:

• Extends the definition of children's playgrounds to cover all publicly accessible play spaces regardless of ownership or adoption status.
• Mandates minimum standards for signage design, size and wording for both indoor and outdoor settings, retaining flexibility on placement only.
• Provides comprehensive and practical guidance on the design, siting, and management of designated smoking, heated tobacco, and vaping areas under exemptions, making clear that exemptions apply to residents only and not to visitors or staff.
• Develops clear guidance on boundary definition and measurement, working with council enforcement teams to ensure the chosen approach is operationally deliverable and legally robust.
• Extends the vaping exemption for smoking cessation services to cover services commissioned by a local authority or NHS body, not only those directly delivered.
• Builds flexibility into the implementation timeline for councils undergoing local government reorganisation, with longer lead-in periods where warranted.
• Recognises councils' street cleaning and waste management responsibilities in the impact assessment and reflects these costs appropriately.
• Develops a more granular enforcement cost model that accounts for regional variation in EHO rates and on-costs, working with the LGA and CIEH.
• Provides New Burdens Funding to cover all additional costs placed on local authorities, including familiarisation, enforcement, advisory, and cleansing costs.
• Develops implementation guidance in partnership with the LGA, the Association of Directors of Public Health, and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, with sufficient lead time ahead of commencement.
• Works with councils to develop a clear and comprehensive definition of council involvement in play areas that is operationally deliverable.

We are grateful for the opportunity to respond and remain committed to working constructively with the Government to support the successful implementation of these measures. Councils want these policies to succeed. With the right support, they are well placed to deliver them.