NEW internal smoking areas could be created at East Lancashire’s hospitals to stop people smoking at entrance doors.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has launched a six-month study to decide how to solve the problem at Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals after complaints from patients, visitors and staff.

The trust said its workers had suffered verbal abuse when asking smokers to move away from entrance areas and sometimes felt intimidated by groups of smokers.

But health chiefs decided to stop short of enforcing a total ban due to the number of patients and visitors who do smoke and their level of addiction.

Nationally around 24 per cent of the population smoke, but in East Lancashire this figure is as high as 30 per cent in Burnley and 27 per cent in Blackburn with Darwen.

Speaking at the trust’s latest board meeting, Mark Brearley, East Lancashire Hospitals’ chief executive, said: “We’ve had a number of complaints from patients and visitors who feel that they have to walk through a cloud of smoke to come in here.

“I don’t think we can underestimate the damage it does to our reputation as a health organisation.

“However our local population have particular characteristics with regards to smoking that we have to recognise.”

Non-executive director Elizabeth Sedgely suggested that the trust could follow the lead of big businesses and ban smoking on its sites entirely.

But Lynn Wissett, deputy chief executive at the trust, said: “Given the statistics I have just laid out we know we could enforce a total smoking ban but the likelihood of that happening is nil.

“Sometimes we have some very vulnerable, sick people who are addicted to smoking and we have to acknowledge that.

“We can’t have people saying if I can’t smoke I won’t come and get the treatment I need.

“We’ve got people coming here in their 80s, they have smoked all their life and they are coming here to die. Are we to say to them you can’t smoke in the last days of your life?

“The issue we have at the moment is because we can’t signpost them anywhere we can’t tell them where to go where they can smoke.”

She said the proposed solution was to create an internal courtyard smoking area for patients, which carers and relatives could also access in certain circumstances, such as following a bereavement.

Staff are banned from smoking on site and if smoking off the premises during their regular breaks they must cover their uniforms.