THE Evening Press is taking a lead in stubbing out smoking in the workplace. A staff smoking room at the paper's Walmgate offices is being closed this month in a bid to encourage employees to cut down or quit.

Liz Page, Managing Director of Newsquest (York) Ltd, which publishes the Evening Press, Star and Gazette and Herald newspapers, said the closure decision was taken for three key reasons:

The company's duty of care to ensure ahealthy environment

Fire safety concerns

Current legislative and cultural thinking in the UK, under which more and more places are becoming smoke-free.

"I felt that York & County Press should join the spirit of the clean air campaign by encouraging staff to cut down on smoking," she said.

But she stressed that staff had been consulted first and then given three months notice of the change to allow heavy smokers to prepare for the change.

Steps had also been taken to help employees who wanted to cut down their smoking or quit altogether.

"A drop-in session was organised and we hope to offer ongoing support in the future," she said.

Selby and York Primary Care Trust also offered assistance to people who wanted to stop smoking.

She said there had been consultations with the company's Staff Liaison Council over whether an external smoking area, with a shelter, should be provided for smokers to use during agreed break times. A decision on that had not yet been made.

It is all a far cry from the old days of the 1980s, when journalists used to work in a fug of smoke in a nicotine-stained newsroom at the paper's former headquarters in Coney Street. Smoking was restricted to the smoke room following the move to Walmgate.

Concerns about the potential fire risks posed by smoking were graphically brought home earlier this year when offices used by the Evening Press', sister paper in Darlington, the Northern Echo, suffered a fire.

The blaze was started by a cigarette which had not been properly extinguished in the smoking room. While the fire itself caused little damage, the sprinkler system was activated and caused damage to one side of the building.

Mrs Page believed the time would come when smoking in the workplace would seem positively archaic.

"In the future, most workplaces are likely to be non-smoking in their entirety and I suspect that one day we will look back and remember those old fashioned times when smoking was still allowed inside the building."

Updated: 09:50 Monday, May 09, 2005