COUNCILLORS have said introducing a smoking ban for council employees during their lunch breaks would have been verging on a ‘dictatorship’.

At a meeting of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, it was decided that banning employees from smoking during contractual hours and extending the smoke-free policy to all 340 council owned sites would not be possible, following an annual review of the current smoking policy.

It was also agreed that the council would continue to encourage workers to give up smoking through the NHS Stop Smoking Service.

Councillors Mavis Childs and John Short backed the council’s decision not to further extend the smoking policy.

Coun Childs (Con, Walcot) said: “I want to remind everybody that there is a fine line between genuine help and dictatorship and this is the fine line.”

Coun Short (Con, Highworth), who quit smoking three years ago, said: “I derived quite a lot of pleasure from smoking, I still miss it, I’m not going to go back to it, but that is my choice.

“I don’t condemn smokers in any way shape or form.

“I believe that we should encourage people to stop smoking, but there is the old saying that you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

“For example, I’m a great supporter of the the GWH, but I don’t support the non smoking rules on the campus.

“We must be careful, we don’t want to become a dictatorship.”

A spokeswoman said making council-owned sites completely smoke free was too costly to be considered a viable option.

“The cost of removing the smoking shelter in the grounds of the Civic Offices would be £250,” she said.

“Signage requirements, if the smoke-free policy was extended to council grounds for areas in which council employees work, would be established in the smoke-free policy and costs would fall to individual site budgets at an estimated cost of £50 per site for 340 sites at an overall cost of £17,000.

“In the current economic climate, we do not feel that is something we can recommend.

“Having said that, we will encourage people to stop smoking wherever possible.”