UK city on brink of hitting households with £300 wood burner fines | UK | News
Residents of many major UK cities face fines of up to £300 (Image: Getty)
Thousands of households in Norwich could soon face fines of up to £300 under plans to extend smoke control regulations across the city. Norwich City Council, led by the Green Party leadership, has approved the Air Quality Action Plan to turn the entire city into a Smog Control Area.
The council is continuing with the restrictions due to concerns about fine particulate emissions and their impact on public health, even though a recent public consultation showed more than half (55%) of local respondents opposed the restrictions. In smoke control areas, you cannot remove smoke from the chimney unless you use a Defra approved device (also known as an “exempt device” or “Defra approved device”) and you can only burn permitted fuel.
Only place fuel in the smoke control area. list of permitted fuelsor any of the following ‘smokeless’ fuels: anthracite, semi-anthracite, gas and low volatile vapor coal, unless you use a Defra approved appliance.
Unpermitted fuels, such as wood, can only be burned in some exempt devices such as boilers, stoves and stoves. The government has stated that you should only use fuel types that the manufacturer says can be used in the device.
In the UK, you may have to pay a fine of up to £300 if smoke comes out of your chimney in a smoke control area. You can also be fined up to £1,000 if you purchase unauthorized fuel for use in a device that is not approved by Defra.
The public consultation meeting in Norwich received 558 responses. 37% of respondents supported it and 8% said they were unsure. BBC reports. However, cabinet documents confirmed that City Hall management continued this policy.
The Greens cabinet member for climate, Toby Bolton, was quoted by the news outlet as saying the consultation had sparked a “mixed response” but added that the results “may not fully reflect the experiences of all communities”. He also said the increase in these emissions was a “concern” for the administration.
Researchers at University College London (UCL) estimate there are around 100 stoves per square kilometer in Norwich.
One local resident said: “Banned our ability to heat our homes with wood would be a travesty of our human rights. Let’s keep our wood stoves; they’re a great plan B when we can’t afford the winter heating bill from gas.”
Most major cities in England fall within the Defra Smoke Control Area, including most of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, Newcastle and Liverpool, as well as most of London.
To find out if you live in a smog control zone, you should contact your local municipality to find out if you live in a smog control zone. The environmental services department will assist you.
A Defra spokesman previously said: “This is about reducing the emissions most harmful to human health in residential areas where they can often cause the most harm, and is not about whether a building has a chimney.
“Smoke Control Areas prevent smoke from coming out of chimneys and only allow certain fuels to be burned unless an approved device is used. Local authorities are responsible for enforcing Smoke Control Areas.
