REVEALED: Nearly £200 per person spent on helping Portsmouth people quit smoking

Data from NHS Digital showed Portsmouth City Council helped 382 people stop smoking between April last year and March.

According to the figures, the local authority allocated £55,000 to help people quit the habit. This amount did not include treatment using pharmaceutical drugs.

In the 2017/18 financial year, the council spent £35,922 on its services while the NHS spent £34,495 on the pharmacotherapy services. 

Overall, £70,417 was spent on stop-smoking services in the city and, with 382 people quitting, it works out as £183 per person.

The information from NHS Digital also showed the council's one-to-one support had a 70 per cent success rate in helping people stop with 497 people accessing the service and 346 people quitting.

Meanwhile, telephone support only had a 13 per cent success rate.

Dr Jason Horsley, Portsmouth City Council's director of public health, said: '˜We're pleased with the impact of our services to help people stop smoking tobacco. More and more people are quitting and we hope this continues.

'˜Stopping smoking has important health benefits. It  also saves people money directly, and not smoking means people are less likely to have days off work and are less likely to use health and social care services which saves money in these areas.

'˜In 2015, the cost of smoking to the NHS alone was estimated at £2.6bn, so spending money to help people stop makes sense.

'˜We've seen a drop in the number of smokers in the city, although we've still got work to do to bring our smoking rates below those for the south east and England as a whole.'

The figures showed Hampshire County Council allocated £2.1m to help people quit smoking excluding pharmacotherapies.

Between April 2017 and this March, 2,691 people stopped smoking. They spent £1.4m on their services while the NHS spent £707,179 on drugs to help residents in the county quit.

Together, £2.1m was spent averaging £791 per person who stopped the habit.