BRITS have been issued an urgent warning as one household item could see you slapped with a £300 fine and a criminal record.
Homeowners should make sure they don’t get caught out as the government have vowed to clamp down on the oldest and dirtiest appliances in the home.
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It means householders who flout air pollution rules on wood-burning stoves could face on-the-spot £300 fines.
This could even result in you receiving a criminal record, reports The Times.
Around one million households in the UK enjoy getting cosy in front of a log burner.
But local authorities responsible for enforcing smoke control rules in urban areas have found it difficult to take people to court and provide evidence beyond reasonable doubt in terms of pollution.
It’s seen English councils only issue 17 fines over six years despite over 18,000 complaints.
And the government has now instructed local authorities to consider using powers in the 2021 Environment Act to issue on-the-spot civil penalties.
These can range from £175 all the way to a whopping £300.
For the most persistent offenders, councils will also be able to pursue criminal prosecutions that could result in a fine of up to £5,000 and £2,500 added for every day a breach continues.
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The popularity of wood-burning stoves has grown rapidly in the past decade as they became something of a middle-class status symbol.
Emissions of one of the most harmful types of air pollution from domestic wood burning, tiny particles known as PM2.5, increased by 35 per cent between 2010 and 2020.
For some people, log burning has proved a handy alternative to heating your home with rising energy costs this winter.
According to the Stove Industry Alliance (SIA), the the cost of burning kiln dried logs is between £150 to £190 per cubic metre.
Based on annual wood log usage of between 3-4 cubic meters, the total cost would be approximately £600 to 700 a year.
On the face of it a log burner is far cheaper than paying energy bills which have spiked massively.
But it’s important to remember the log burner only heats one room in your house.
Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, said that some stove users did not understand the effects on the environment, particularly those with poor-quality models or who are burning wet wood.
Coffey said: “I want an educational approach. We want people to do the right thing.”
However, Coffey said there were no plans to ban wood-burning stoves or open fires.
ClientEarth, which has won pollution court cases against the government, said more enforcement was good but only a small measure, and that domestic burning needed to be phased out.
Andrea Lee, from the charity, said: “Pollution from wood-burning is a growing source of fine particulate matter pollution in some areas, which is a serious threat to people’s health.”
Up to 38,000 people die prematurely in England each year because of dirty air with air pollution a significant public health threat.
