SMOKERS can still light up in pavement cafes, hotel rooms and on open-air train platforms under a full “what’s in, what’s out” guide to the new smoking ban to be published this week.

Under the health department regulations, lighting up will be prohibited in airports and covered bus and railway stations, as well as restaurants and pubs, when the ban begins next summer.

The ban, expected to gain royal assent this month, is also likely to extend to taxis, minicabs and company cars, unless they are used by just one employee.

It is expected to herald the appearance of heated outdoor shelters as pubs and restaurants try to hang on to smoking customers.

Some pubs may build partial roofs over courtyards to create legal smoking areas and take drinks out there.

The shelters will need to be open-sided to comply with the health department rules to ban smoking in any enclosed or “substantially enclosed” public place, defined as having a roof and more than 50% of the perimeter enclosed by walls.

Nick Bish, chief executive of the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, said: “Pubs could create an enclosed yard with a partial roof.

“Our advice to members is that they should make a decision about their business. They may wish to deter smokers. If you are Le Gavroche you probably don’t want lots of smokers loitering on your doorstep. There will be those who will accommodate smokers outside by putting up an umbrella and not much more.

“Then there will be those who will go the whole hog with shelters, heated shelters and waiter service, and the whole pub will go outside.”

Sports stadiums and most bus shelters will escape the ban although they may be included later.

Hotel guests will be allowed to smoke in their rooms if they book a designated smoking room. The regulations are expected to oblige hotels to advise local authorities on numbers of smoking rooms.

From next summer, smoking rooms will be banned in offices and employers will have to put up signs informing workers that smoking in the workplace is illegal.

Employers who fail to put up the signs, which should measure no less than 23cm by 16cm, will be fined £200, rising to £1,000 for repeat offences.

Bish believes the need for every office to display “no-smoking” signs, even if they have been smoke-free for years, is over-bureaucratic.

He said: “The whole world is going to need to put up signs. To make it an offence for any office not to put up a no-smoking sign is bizarre.”

Smokers who light up in any enclosed public place face a £50 fine, which could increase to £200 if they repeatedly flout the ban.

The heftiest fines, up to £2,500, will be given to managers who fail to stop smokers lighting up.

A hotline will be set up for managers and members of the public to report smokers or venues ignoring the ban.

Anti-smoking campaigners hope the government will use powers under the health bill to extend smoking bans to all railway station platforms and bus shelters later.

Action on Smoking and Health said: “It would seem logical to make all railway platforms smoke-free.”

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