Covid-19 and a lack of grant funding have frustrated local efforts to encourage smokers to quit, a committee has heard.

A report presented to Havering’s health and wellbeing board on Wednesday, January 26, revealed more than 18,000 in the borough continue to smoke – just more than nine per cent of the adult population.

While the smoking prevalence gap between manual and office workers in Havering has been almost completely closed, the proportion of pregnant women who are smokers at the time of their delivery remains higher than in the rest of London, at 6.7pc.

The council’s 2019-2023 tobacco harm reduction strategy aimed to end smoking among pregnant women, stop children taking up the habit and reduce the addiction prevalence among adults.

Updating the board on the progress of the strategy, tobacco harm reduction lead Osama Mahmoud said the diversion of resources owing to the Covid-19 pandemic had meant “little to no progress” had been made on several of the strategy’s workstreams.

This has been compounded by gaps in smoking cessation services in the borough.

Havering is the only borough in north-east London without a local stop smoking service after it was decommissioned in 2017 due to cuts to the public health grant.

Instead, borough residents can access Stop Smoking London online, and pregnant women and their families can go to a specialist stop smoking service commissioned through Barking and Dagenham Council.

But despite roughly 1,300 Havering residents searching for local services on the Stop Smoking London website, Mr Mahmoud told the board there had been less than 50 sign ups and just 11 self-reported quits through the helpline since 2017.

The specialist service for pregnant women, meanwhile, does not include post-natal support, contrary to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance.

Mr Mahmoud said this was impacting the success of the service, with “anecdotal evidence that a number of women who have received stop smoking support from our service are referred back for a second or even third pregnancy”.

Mark Ansell, director of public health in Havering, admitted there were “serious gaps in our service provision” and said it was a priority to make sure a face-to-face avenue was made available, if it could be done affordably.