Bradford Council has announced it will be moving towards a smoke-free environment.

Health chiefs, managers and staff representatives met yesterday to start the consultation process vowing to take a strong line.

The leader of Bradford Council, Council-lor Margaret Eaton, said: "Bradford Council needs to take a strong line on public health and will be moving towards a smoke-free environment in the interests of staff and visitors to Council buildings." She said the plans and timescales to ban smoking would be drawn up with full consultation with unions.

The early move towards going smoke-free in the long term was welcomed by health chiefs across the city who have been urging the Council to take a lead. At the Environment and Waste Management Improvement Committee at City Hall yesterday the Government's proposals were outlined to Council managers who were asked for their views on how a ban in the workplace would affect them and their staff.

The Government wants to ban smoking in the workplace except, controversially, for pubs and clubs which do not serve food.

Bradford, with a shocking cigarettes-linked death-rate figure of one in three among the over 35s, is being urged to take a strong stance as Kirklees has done. There employees cannot smoke on premises or even at the entrances.

The Telegraph & Argus has been running the Clear the Air campaign calling for smoking to be banned in public enclosed spaces. Bradford Ice Rink has recently banned it to protect teenagers and it staff.

Dr Dinesh Saralaya, Bradford Teaching Hospital's NHS Foundation Trust's consultant respiratory physician, welcomed the Council's statement of intent. He hoped many other major employers across the city would follow suit in the long-term. "I wholeheartedly back what the Council is saying, I completely endorse it," he said.

Doctors in the city are seeing increasing numbers of passive smokers with lung cancer - mainly people in their 60s who have been married to heavy smokers or used to work in pubs and clubs.

The consultation period will run until September and key Council departments and members will be asked their views on how this will affect their work. They question of how "smoke-free" is defined will also be addressed.