WORK must be done to limit the damage smoking does in Bury, councillors have ruled.

Smoking kills 80,000 in the UK each and 19.5 per cent of Bury residents smoke — roughly 35,000 of people and one of the highest numbers in the North West.

Bury Council has decided to follow in the footsteps of more than 80 other local authorities by signing the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control.

It commits the council to lead anti-smoking campaigns, help people quit smoking, stop youngsters taking up the habit and protect families from the effects of second-hand smoke.

Councillors unanimously backed the motion at a town-hall Full Council meeting on September 14.

The motion detailed how smoking kills more people than obesity, alcohol, road crashes and illegal drug use combined, and thousands of children suffer harm as a result of smoking.

It is estimated that smoking costs the Bury economy £54.5 million a year, and rates of smoking-related deaths in the borough are higher than the national average.

The council already works with charities and health authorities to persuade pregnant woman and school children not to smoke, ensure smoking is not happening in workplaces and to target people in areas where many people smoke, working with GPs.

Trading Standards workers, meanwhile, are clamping down on the sale of illegal tobacco products and on underage sales. Two thirds of smokers in Bury start before they are aged 18.

At the meeting, Cllr Susan Southworth said: "Our own target is to reduce smoking in Bury to 16 per cent by 2018.

"As the mother of a 15-year-old son, I wanted to consider the initiatives there are to prevent young people from taking up smoking in the first place."

Cllr Southworth, of Labour, listed standardised cigarette packaging legislation, the ban to displaying cigarettes in shops and the ban on people smoking in cars where children are present as positive steps towards that goal.

She added: "As local leaders, we must grasp the opportunity for local government to lead the action and to tackle smoking to secure the health, welfare, social, economic and environmental benefits that come from reduced smoking prevalence."

Conservative Cllr Khalid Hussain said he was recently outside the Bury branch of McDonald's in The Rock.

He added: "That particularly patch is notorious with smokers. I had to ask my daughter to hold her breath as we went passed because there is a puff of smoke. It's a wrong advert for the town centre of Bury."

Conservative Cllr Oliver Kersh, aged 22, said: "We hear a lot of rhetoric that goes on in councils but signing this really is a tangible responsibility that we will take to the streets of Bury to fight smoking.

"I'm hopeful that my generation will finally be the one to make smoking extinct."