Staff smoking is costing British companies more than £2bn a year, according to figures released by the NHS and the London School of Economics.

The research found that last year businesses lost £1.1bn from smoking related illness absences, £914m from smoking breaks and £133m from fire damage.

With many small firms currently struggling due to the economic downturn the research highlights the loss of productivity that a business can suffer if too many employees are smokers.

"Smoking continues to have a detrimental impact on the UK workforce and there remains a strong commercial case for employers to further reduce smoking prevalence among their employees," said Professor Alistair McGuire.