Smoke Free

With 64 days to go before it’s illegal to smoke in enclosed public spaces, it really is time to consider whether bus shelters are “substantially enclosed premises”, or not. There are two views.

One is that an enclosed bus shelter, having a roof and more than two sided, and openings less than half of the shelter’s perimeter, certainly falls within the Health Act 2006’s regulations. This may even include a simple cantilever with side panels, where technically the “opening” is less than half the perimeter.

The other view is that the government has exempted bus shelters (for the time being, at any rate) because prohibiting and enforcing smoking at most bus shelters is difficult if impossible.

There are more who favour the former argument than the latter. This will be a further blow to smokers who, since the early 1990s, have increasingly found it difficult to find a bus on which they have have a quick puff. Now, they will have to stand out in the rain while waiting.

Where do you turn for a definitive view? There’s nothing that we can find on the official smokefreeengland.co.uk website that *categorically* states you shall no longer smoke in an English bus shelter (whether enclosed or cantilever), but there is a downloadable sign designed for bus shelters. Scotland is a little more unequivocal: “If bus shelters are 'wholly or substantially enclosed', then they must display the appropriate signage.”

Few operators own and maintain bus shelters these days, so they won’t be directly affected by the legislation. Operators have enough of a problem regarding enforcing no smoking on buses at the moment, without the added burden of staying clear of the legal consequences under the new regulations.

And if you find the idea odd of a bus shelter being defined as "premises", with property prices in Sandbanks currently at £20mil an acre, we reckon a bus shelter’s worth about £60,000.