More on the new Forest report highlighting local authority smoking policies.
After the Telegraph, Sun and Mail ran stories based on the report, I noted that two London councils had distanced themselves from the suggestion – based on their own replies to our FOI requests – that their policies included a ban on smoking in home offices.
This week Pilita Clark (no relation), associate editor and business columnist at the Financial Times, noted that Hammersmith and Fulham council had subsequently sent an email to staff saying 'it was OK for employees to smoke if they were working at home'.
Although Clark (no relation!) didn't mention the Forest report directly, I think we can agree that without it – and the response it generated – the council would not have been forced to clarify their position with such a clear, albeit defensive, statement.
Other councils will have taken note.
Forest doesn't win many battles. On this occasion though I'm going to count this as a small but significant victory.
See 'The looming legal minefield of working from home' (Financial Times).
PS. Josie Appleton, author of our report, writes:
When I asked UK councils about their current policy on employees’ smoking, Hammersmith and Fulham replied to my Freedom-of-Information request with a document (produced in alliance with Kensington and Chelsea council in 2015) that said council home workers were banned from smoking in their private offices.
The document stated that: ‘any part of a private dwelling used solely for work purposes will be required to be smokefree ... home workers are expected to have the same set-up at home as they do in the office. Smoking is not allowed in any of the council’s offices and home workers should not smoke at their workstation during office hours.’ It even said that ‘family members should not be allowed to smoke in the home worker’s office’.
After outraged media coverage, Hammersmith and Fulham claimed that this was not in fact its current policy, and/or that it was not enforced. But this policy is not alone, or even unusual: the move into regulating smoking in the home is well underway.
In other words, we've won a battle but the war goes on.
See 'Now they want to ban smoking at home' (Spiked).