THE County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is updating its no-smoking policy and will implement a ban in all its hospital grounds by spring next year.
Changes to the policy will be introduced in two phases.
Next month, the staff smoking room at Darlington Memorial Hospital will be closed and smoking will be limited to designated areas.
Those areas will be signposted and leaflets will be sent to patients with their appointment or admission letters.
Security staff will police the areas although the trust has promised a "soft" approach to implementing the new policy in the first 12 months.
Phase two of the strategy will begin in April 2006 and this will include a full review of its no-smoking policy.
It is expected that the review will lead to a complete smoking ban across all of the trust's sites, to coincide with the Government's recent White Paper on smoking in public places.
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