Question from: James R Ross, Facilities Manager, Tamar Science Park
As we are all aware, the new smoking legislation is coming into force on the 1st July. How are you going about highlighting this fact to your tenants? Here at Tamar Science Park we already operate a no smoking policy in the buildings and have two allocated permitted smoking areas which will conform to the new legislation. Further to this, we have placed no smoking signs strategically around the Park and have highlighted the permitted smoking areas to all tenant companies. This has generally worked well. My concern is how will the new legislation affect tenants within our buildings? Do you feel that the signage that we put on all main entrances as a landlord will be sufficient to cover all the companies within the building, or will it be necessary for them to individually sign their own unit doors? If this is the case I feel that it will detract from the whole appearance and general feel of the common areas and corridors with a mass of no smoking signs everywhere you turn. Any insight into this dilemma would be appreciated.

As you may be aware, Scotland is a year ahead of you on the smoking ban. We have found it perfectly adequate to have the appropriate signage displayed on the main access doors to each of the buildings on our Park. This was reinforced in the run up to 'D-Day' by circulars and emails to all of our site tenants making them aware that they all had to comply with the new legislation. I have to say that we have had no problems whatsoever in enforcing the ban over the past 14 months. George Walker, Park Manager, Pentlands Science Park