PREGNANT women in York will get twelve weeks of free nicotine replacement therapy to help them quit smoking, under new council plans to prioritise unborn children.

Senior councillor Carol Runciman approved a new plan for York’s stop smoking services on Monday, reducing help for everyone except pregnant women and people on low incomes.

Cllr Runciman had been asked to rubber-stamp an outline for the new services, replacing old services that transferred to the council from the NHS several years ago.

Those old arrangements ran out at the end of March, meaning that for around four months York has not had any free services to help people quit.

Sharon Stoltz, York’s director of public health, told the meeting on Monday: “As a result of cuts to public health in Local Authority budgets, we have had to look at how to invest our remaining funds very wisely.

“Our focus was to look at the priority groups that we really wanted to make free nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) available to.”

They proposed 12 weeks of free NRT for pregnant women, as a way of prioritising the health of the unborn child.

Ms Stoltz added: “Nicotine is a very powerful addiction and we want to support all pregnant women to be able to quit smoking during pregnancy.”

Cllr Runciman also approved a plan to give people on very low incomes two weeks free NRT.

Ms Stoltz said setting a small “hardship fund” to pay for that help would mean people on very low incomes who were either rolling their own cigarettes, or not getting their cigarettes from “mainstream outlets” would not be deterred from quitting smoking because of the higher cost of NRT.

Free NRT for two weeks would ease that transition, she added.

At the same meeting Cllr Runciman told public health managers to continue with plans for an integrated wellbeing service at the council, bringing together staff working on sports initiatives, the stop smoking services.

The new service will “target the physically inactive priority groups to enable them to become more active and improve their overall levels of wellbeing” according to a report prepared for the meeting.