There is no requirement to erect a smoking shelter - however if you wish to have one you MUST apply for planning permission.

For businesses that want to provide a smoking shelter or smoking structure for their staff or customers thorough preparation and planning are essential.

Premises that are open to the public or that are places of work for more than one person will be required to be smokefree in all enclosed and substantially enclosed parts. Premises will be considered 'enclosed' if they have a ceiling or roof and (except for doors, windows or passageways) are totally enclosed either on a permanent or temporary basis.

Premises will be considered 'substantially enclosed' if they have a ceiling or roof, but there are permanent openings in the walls which are less than half of the total areas of the walls. This does not include doors, windows and other openings that can be opened or closed.

In general if an opening or cover can be closed, the 50% rule will be calculated on the basis that the openings are closed. There are no official standards set for smoking shelters due to the huge amount of design variations that would comply. Siting of the shelter is very important, if a shelter is placed too close to another structure e.g. a wall, then it may not comply. The legislation does not specify a distance that smoking shelters should be from other structure.

When calculating the area of a smoking shelter the perimeter is normally set by the roof. The roof should then be ignored with the calculation consisting of the total vertical area of the shelter that is enclosed.