Coronavirus has made the Stoptober campaign more vital than ever, Public Health England says.

A new survey shows 45 per cent of smokers are smoking more since the pandemic began.

Boredom due to lockdown and anxiety were the most common reasons given for the increase.

Stoptober, now in its tenth year, encourages England’s six million smokers to kick their habit for 28 days in October.

More young people are also now smoking, as data from UCL Smoking Toolkit Study indicates 24% per cent

Smoking is estimated to cost Swindon’s community approximately £56 million ever year, according to Swindon Tobacco Control Alliance’s report.

Smoking is still the leading preventable cause of premature death and the Stoptober campaign has so far encouraged 2.3 million quit attempts.

Cabinet member for adults and health Brian Ford said: “To a degree the increase is understandable, but it’s not helping people’s health at all.

“We would advise smokers to cut down and we will give them all the aid and assistance we can to try and get them to stop.

“We have to break this chain of increased smoking amongst those people that are already smoking and so this campaign brings a focus to it.”

Councillor Ford stopped smoking 20 years ago when he was in his 50s after his doctor told him his lungs were medically 80 years old. He said he immediately felt healthier after quitting.

PHE’s most recent data shows that 13.1 per cent of Swindon’s population smoked in 2019 which is a reduction from 17.7 per cent in 2018. This compares to 13.9 per cent of England’s population in 2019.

Coun Ford added: “It’s a positive change and I’m very pleased to see the data because we do have people working on stopping people smoking all the time.

“But it does tend to bobble around these figures and we have managed to get the smoking down a few years ago and it went back up.

“Things like Covid haven’t helped that so while I’m pleased, I’m not complacent and we will continue with our work.”

But PHE also found that only 0.92 per cent of Swindon’s smokers successfully quit using the NHS four-week quit success criteria in 2019 – estimated to be the lowest number in the region.

Participants in the 28-day challenge can make use of free tools including the NHS Quit Smoking app and Stoptober Facebook communities.

The Personal Quit Plan provides support to quitters from local Stop Smoking Services and stop smoking aids.