THOUSANDS of people in Worcestershire quit smoking last year but have cost the taxpayer more than half a million pounds.

In Worcestershire, nearly half of all people (47 per cent) who attempted to quit smoking in 2010/11 succeeded, above the national average for England (45 per cent).

Figures show that only 17 out of 79 pregnant women in Worcestershire are known to have given up smoking in 2010/11 but in 49 cases it was not known whether the woman had successfully kicked her habit.

The figures, published by the NHS Information Centre, show 5,793 people in the county set a quit date for smoking and 2,730 of those people were successful in meeting it.

NHS Worcestershire spent £595,000 in 2010/11 on trying to get people to quit, an average cost of £218 per person. Total expenditure on NHS Stop Smoking Services was £84.3 million, nearly £500,000 more than in the previous year and almost £60 million more than 10 years ago.

The figures show the number of successful attempts to quit smoking through NHS Stop Smoking Services in 2010/11 is treble that of 10 years ago nationally.

NHS Information Centre chief executive Tim Straughan said: “NHS Stop Smoking Services in England saw more quit dates set with it in the last financial year than ever before; and indeed the greatest ever number of successful quit attempts.

“But while a bigger number of quit dates are being set with the service and the number of attempts to successfully kick the habit have also risen, overall the success rate is hovering at just below half.

“This suggests that while there may be a greater resolve within our society to quit smoking with the NHS, it is still the case that about half of all attempts are not successful.”

In 2010/11 there were almost 788,000 quit dates set with the services in England and nearly 384,000 successful quit attempts. This compares to 227,000 quit dates and just fewer than 120,000 successful attempts in 2001/02.

However, although rising numbers of people are kicking the habit the percentage of people quitting across the country has fallen from a high of 53 per cent in 2005/06.

South Central Strategic Health Authority (SHA) showed the highest successful quit rate at 55 per cent of the 50,000 quit dates set with the services.

The North East and North West SHAs had the lowest successful quit rates, each at 44 per cent, of the 59,000 and 138,000 quit dates set respectively.