A charity has called for the rollout of clear guidance that enables councils to support adults in quitting smoking, following a poll which reveals widespread support for more smokefree public spaces.

Commissioned by charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the YouGov poll found that 93% of people would back making children’s play areas smokefree.

Highlighting the need for the Government to take ‘more ambitious action’ than its current smokefree proposals, ASH said that the data confirms the ‘overwhelming public support’ for broadened protections that ensure further outdoor areas are smokefree.

The poll found that 78% of respondents would also back smokefree public transport waiting areas, with an additional 68% being in favour of smokefree college and university campuses, and 62% wanting smokefree outdoor seating in hospitality settings.

According to ASH, the move would protect children, workers and the clinically vulnerable. It has also urged that vaping should be restricted across indoor settings, with the aim of preventing children from viewing vaping ‘as an everyday behaviour to emulate’.

But ASH has emphasised that vaping rules should be permitted indoors if it helps smoking cessation, warning that the guidelines must not ‘undermine the critical role vaping plays in helping people quit smoking’.

As part of its recommendations, ASH has called for the development of clear guidance that informs the NHS and councils about the function of vaping as a quitting tool, in addition to a communications strategy that outlines more accurate harm perceptions.

Furthermore, it has urged the Government to create a national strategy to limit smoking in the home, to eliminate exemptions that permit smoking in specialist tobacconists and performances, and to maintain vape free exemptions in smoking cessation and abstinence support services.

Hazel Cheeseman, Chief Executive at ASH, said: ‘Smokefree laws have been one of the biggest public health success stories in recent decades, but millions of people are still exposed to harmful second-hand smoke in outdoor settings.’

She added that the expansion of smokefree laws is a ‘common-sense next step that will protect health and support a smokefree generation.’

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said the DHSC considering responses to its consultation on free-from places which closed on Friday, which included proposals to making several settings free of smoke, vape and heated tobacco, as well as ensuring indoor spaces are vape-free and heated tobacco-free.

‘This strikes the right balance right between protecting the most vulnerable and limiting any potential negative impacts on businesses’, they added.