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Woodburning stoves face tougher restrictions

Woodburning stove
Woodburning stove

Wood-burning stoves face tighter restrictions in pollution hotspots under Government plans to improve air quality.

New stoves will have stricter limits on how much smoke they can emit every hour in official smoke control areas, as part of new five-year green targets.

Ministers are also putting pressure on councils to crack down on illegal burning in smoke control areas, and will discourage the burning of wet wood outdoors.

Although councils can impose fines of up to £1,000 in smoke control areas, no penalties have been issued in the last five years.

The changes are part of the first five-yearly review of how the Government is implementing its 25 Year Environment Plan targets to boost nature, improve air and water quality and cut waste.

It includes details on how it will reduce exposure to harmful PM2.5 particulates by 22 per cent, compared to 2018, within the next five years.

Criminal prosecutions

The UK regularly breaches World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline limits on PM2.5, with wood burning responsible for around 17 per cent of the pollutant, according to statistics from the environment department (Defra).

Under rules to be brought in within five years, new wood-burning stoves in dozens of smoke control areas will only be allowed to emit 3g of smoke per hour, compared to 5g under current regulations.

Industry experts said the majority of stoves that are currently approved for sale in smoke control areas would comply with the new regulations.

Councils in England can impose fines of up to £300 on households if their chimneys emit too much smoke, and up to £1,000 for burning wood in an open fire. Criminal prosecutions can be pursued for serious repeat offenders.

Councils rely on local complaints to identify potential breaches of the regulation but have not issued fines in the last five years despite 8,000 reports, according to the environment journal the ENDS Report.

Passing the buck

Andrea Lee from environmental law charity Client Earth said putting pressure on councils to impose fines on households was “passing the buck”.

“It’s not fair to put the burden on people [by using fines], especially when the Government is not really coming clean on what damage has been caused by woodburners,” she said.

“At the moment, there are people who may have no other choice because of the energy crisis. In that case what the Government should be focusing on is not leaving people to choose between heating and their health.”

Smoke control areas were first introduced in 1993, and mandate the use of smokeless fuels, or stoves that meet criteria imposed by the environment department.

They are concentrated around major cities including London, Birmingham and Manchester, which have some of the poorest air quality in the country.

But smaller smoke control areas are dotted around the country and the environment department says households should check with their local council to see if they are affected.

Wet wood ban

The Government is also considering extending the ban on the sale of wet wood and traditional coal for use outdoors, after a ban for domestic use in 2021.

This would not affect traditional fuels used for barbecues, such as charcoal, nor would it outlaw the burning of wet wood, including garden waste.

Therese Coffey, the environment secretary, on Monday appeared to implicitly criticise local council enforcement of air pollution rules as she said she would have liked to have brought forward the Government’s current 2040 target on cutting PM2.5 concentrations to 2030.

The UK's current legal limit for PM2.5 concentration is four times the WHO's guidelines, and the Government has committed to halve it by 2040.

“But the evidence shows us that with the best will in the world, we cannot achieve that everywhere by the end of this decade, particularly in London,” she said, during a speech at a nature reserve in King’s Cross. She added that councils need to use existing powers “rather than just asking for more”.

'Roadmap to the cliff edge'

Among other pledges in the Government’s new environmental improvement plan is a commitment for everyone to live no more than a 15-minute walk from a green space or water.

The Government has also vowed to create at least 500,000 hectares of new wildlife habitats, including 25 new or expanded National Nature Reserves. The plan, which also includes a pledge to crack down on leaky dual flush toilets, was met with scepticism by green groups on Tuesday.

"If this is a roadmap, it's a roadmap to the cliff edge,” said Dr Doug Parr, of Greenpeace UK. "Here's yet more paperwork containing a threadbare patchwork of policies that fail to tackle many of the real threats to our natural world. This won't do.

"Ministers want to crack down on dual flush toilets while letting water firms pump tonnes of raw sewage into our rivers and seas.”