HAVE YOUR SAY: save householders from "woodstove regret"

Within the first days after the launch of our 2026 campaign on woodstoves, we began to receive overwhelming evidence why change is needed. One in 12 homes have installed them - but the pictures here of unused stoves capture the regret of householders who've stopped using them, when they realise the health harms putting them, their loved ones and their neighbours at risk.

Already, we've a chance to tackle this. The Government has announced tighter rules - its consultation ended in March and we're lobbying hard. Read excerpts from our formal response below, and this is our evidence to Newcastle's Air Quality Action Plan 2026 survey. And you can see our Cleaner Air 2026 campaign overall goals here.

REGRETS OF PEOPLE WHO INSTALLED WOODSTOVES

Local people who bought woodstoves - then abandoned using them - have told us:

🔥 “We installed a wood burner thinking it was good for the environment. It’s awful to find out that it’s quite the opposite.” 

🔥“We thought it was eco-friendly but how wrong we were! We feel we were misled by the industry promoting them.”

WHY ALL OUR EFFORTS TO SPREAD THE WORD ARE VITAL TO IMPROVE LOCAL AIR QUALITY

Our in-depth explainer on woodstoves can be seen here:

https://www.climateactionnewcastle.com/post/wood-burning-stoves-hidden-costs-and-harms

• Regardless of possible Government changes to rules for future purchases, the homes that already have woodstoves may continue to use them for 20-30 years. They will continue to emit ultrafine particles: that is a potential 3.5 million homes where people, pets and local wildlife are at risk.

• More than 90% of those homes already have a separate heat source; if they stopped using their woodstoves, it could save the NHS £54m.

• By alerting our neighbours, workmates, friends and community groups to these dangers, we will give them the information they need to protect themselves, by reducing or ending their use of their woodstoves.

SOME OF THE MANY ORGANISATIONS CHALLENGING CURRENT WOODSTOVE REGULATIONS

• The proposed changes fail to implement the Climate Change Committee’s recommendations that wood-burning stoves in homes should be phased out because of the carbon they emit. Wood burning smoke also contains fine particle air pollution (PM2.5), which is widely seen as the air pollutant that has the most devastating impact on human health.

• The Future Homes Standard states as its aim that it will mandate that new homes in England be designed for low-carbon heating and high energy efficiency. Essentially, such houses will be carbon neutral once the grid itself is decarbonised. The weakening of these rules for developers by allowing wood-burning stoves as a secondary heating source appears to go against these stated aims.

• The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (with the Healthy Air Coalition of which it is a member) has called for an action plan for the phasing out of domestic wood burning to be developed. Allowing wood-burning stoves in new homes despite the growing evidence showing their significant contribution to air pollution and carbon emissions, is a backward step in the fight to improve air quality and protect public health.

  Mark Elliott, President of CIEH, said: "We urge the Government to be serious about air quality and protect the public from the harms that PM2.5 has on their health." It called on the Government to reconsider allowing woodstoves in new homes. "We will continue to advocate for homes being heated in the cleanest way possible to reduce the pollutants people and communities create, the health impacts they cause and the strain this generates on our health services.”

SUPPORT AND RESPONSES SINCE OUR CAMPAIGN LAUNCH

• Mary Glindon, Newcastle East MP, said in her regular newspaper column: "I ask you to think carefully about the harms to our health of woodburners". She expressed support for Climate Action Newcastle's drive to raise awarenesness, and said: "The message of Clean Air Night 2026 is that wood burning is the most polluting way to heat your home and even with newer ‘Ecodesign’ wood burners homes are three times more polluted than those without Respected groups such as the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health, and Mums for Lungs also back this message."

• Research findings have been shared with us: a recent Biobank report found tiny particles from woodburning "particularly concerning", while damage to our insect populations has been spelled out by the Royal Entomological Society. 

• Newcastle City Council:  "We understand the  importance of clean air in the city and  recommend that residents consult our air pollution page - https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/services/environment-and-waste/environmental-health-and-pollution/air-pollution."

• Response to consultation from a CAN supporter: "This consultation is asking the wrong questions.  Labelling, testing, enforcement and compliance are red herrings and a waste of time and money.  The data is in, it's clear: wood burning stoves are terrible for air pollution, it's not possible to enforce fuel types and use, and they are completely unnecessary in cities. Stove design is not the issue.  Once a stove is in, people burn all sorts in it. No-one bothers to test for humidity in the wood, or whether it's treated or painted.  These are the biggest factors in pollution levels, not the design of the stove. 

  Wood burning stoves in cities need to be banned.  We have one and we don't use it because we've realised the pollution it causes.  Our neighbours have one and whenever they use it, we know about it because the pollution comes into our house.  It's not nice living next to a bonfire, and terrible for the kids lungs."

EXCERPTS FROM OUR CLIMATE ACTION NEWCASTLE RESPONSE TO THE GOVERNMENT CONSULTATION (March 2026)

As the consultation structure was based on a Questionnaire, we have reproduced key sections of our responses here rather than the entire document.

The advice of a range of public health and medical services is that there is no safe minimum for fine particulates. This is particularly relevant to private residential householders where there is no monitoring of compliance to safety advice (such as with regard to device maintenance and air flow) and no special protection to try to limit the exposure of children or other vulnerable people to the particulates. However, the main issue that must be taken into account is that the proposed new standard will make no difference to the woodstoves already present in one in 12 homes, which will be capable of spreading even more emissions for 20-30 years.  

We are sure that your research will have looked closely at the various impacts of different approaches to achieve reductions in smoking. We are not experts on that topic, but clearly remember that the smoking campaigns include clear individual examples of how those health harms damaged the lives of smokers: we saw amputations, breathing difficulties, lung cancer etc. The woodstoves information lacks these examples, but when we have spoken to people who have experienced how the stoves affected them, their descriptions are powerful. It seems wrong not to protect family members and others by including this information in the Government recommendations.

Our organisation has been contacted by dozens of woodstove users who are environmentally aware and cautious about purchases, but who had no idea that woodstoves were linked to emissions of fine particulates and linked to health harms for people and wildlife. They had the perception that woodstoves were better for the environment and people than other forms of heating, and so went ahead with their purchases based on this misconception. When they discovered the reality, people like them stop using the stoves (more than 90% of woodstove purchasers are only using them as a secondary source of heating). They have sent us photos of their woodstoves standing idle - a waste of money, a waste of space, and a constant reminder of the error. We urge that the Government recognise the consumer standards aspect of so many people being unaware of the risks and making a purchasing decision based on misleading perceptions. Clear labelling that ensures every purchaser is aware of the risks is essential.

We feel the harm to wildlife should be indicated, using visuals as well as words. As stated earlier, we believe that the statement should cover the REAL extent of risk.

In addition, as stated earlier, the evidence from previous health campaigns is that the public will understand better those risks if they are exposed to actual examples. We suggest adding a brief way to access short videos or audio (though a QR code?) and use first names to convey that these are real-life experiences of other people who purchased woodstoves (or people in their lives) about how it felt to begin to develop health problems.

(Suggestion for device label wording) "This appliance emits air pollution that can harm health: please protect yourself, children, pets, neighbours and wildlife by finding out more before you take this decision. The QR code and website below take you to interviews with woodstove owners about the health difficulties they or their loved ones experienced."

  As stated earlier, there is considerable evidence that purchasers of woodstoves are not aware of the health risks. This is unfair for them, their families and guests, their neighbours and wildlife. Local people our organisation has encountered during our research on this matter have written or spoken about their surprise and dismay - they had often believed woodstoves were better for the environment and humans that other energy sources. Quotes include:

“We installed a wood burner thinking it was good for the environment. It’s awful to find out that it’s quite the opposite.”

“We thought it was eco-friendly but how wrong we were! We feel we were misled by the industry promoting them.”

As outlined earlier, we recommend easy links (such as a QR code and short URL) to more information about the health harms and specific first-person descriptions of what it is like to experience those health harms. (Suggestion for wood pack label wording): Burning solid fuels to heat your home can lead to many health harms: heart, lung and brain conditions (such as dementia or asthma) can affect family or neighbours and result in premature death.

The reasons for these suggestions include: more direct "plain English" will aid understanding; it is more informative to include the fact that fine particulates can lodge in the brain; the word "many" helps convey that there are many more examples that those provided; and adding "neighbours" adds a social pressure. With the current low awareness of the harms of woodstoves, people may feel their friends and neighbours will enjoy getting to know a householder has a "cosy woodstove"; it is useful for them to realise that neighbours may fall ill as a result of  breathing in harmful emissions from next door, and may resent realising they are being put at risk.

The serious consequences of unsafe practices must be underlined by the scale of the penalties - the harms have not been given the priority that is needed to protect the public.

We are sure that Defra already has evidence and data from European approaches to the issue of how to reduce the incidence of health harms, and we would urge that these are drawn on in the broader development of policy.

This heightened policy focus and action needs to be rapid, in the light of expectations that woodstove installations will continue to rise. It is much less costly for the UK to DETER those installations than to have to pay for the consequences in NHS costs, loss of workforce, harm to children whose entire lives may be affected etc.  And there is other information to help with deterrence: woodburning is usually a less efficient heat source, as well as being three times more polluting than other forms of heating. Woodburning directly affects air that we breathe – its pollution now has greater impact than that from vehicles.  The results are costs for our health services, harm to local wildlife, damaged lives and lives cut short. These are powerful reasons to urge our national public health bodies and local councils to raise awareness through all forms of media about how we can reduce this harm. We’ve done it with seat belts, smoking bans, flu jabs; opening our eyes to see this threat – then taking action – will open the way to yet more progress.

 Many parts of France are banning woodstoves - we were disappointed that the UK Government has stepped back from a ban in new builds and urge that some form of deterrent be researched for areas where other forms of heating are available (at the very least, some sort of required "cooling off" period where people are provided with materials to assist with "please think twice before taking this decision"). We appreciate that it is important not to convey a sense of disapproval, but instead to adopt a consumer protection approach. This could seek to provide information about why many other people wish they had had this information because they made a decision that they regretted when they learnt about the health risks - ideally this would include real-life human stories showing people's unused woodstoves and how these are a daily reminder of their mistake and wasted money.

The remaining huge issue that must be considered is HEALTH HARMS FROM ALL THE EXISTING INSTALLATIONS. The Government's proposals will have little effect on most of the stoves already in homes, primarily those where there is already a primary source of heating. Many will continue to function for another 20 to 30 years. We urge research into how to reduce emission levels from those stoves, to reduce the impact on urban pollution levels and the health harms (with the knock-on human misery and the cost to health services and ability of those people to work). Effective methods to convince people to minimise stove use would reduce emissions and health harms, while still allowing people to use their stoves.  However, continuing to allow use when needed should not prevent action to protect the public when fine particulate emissions spike at dangerous levels. We request that consideration is given to measures like those in Paris, where woodstove use is immediately banned when particulates reach a dangerous level (usually in mid-winter); our local urban air is also monitored – why shouldn’t we have the same protection?

And we also urge far greater transparency over the effectiveness of Smoke Control Areas and an honest discussion about how these can be as effective as possible. We understand that the statistics for enforcement are very low: few complaints; very few enforcement actions; and very few penalties levied. We appreciate the difficulties and suggest all measures to improve this are examined. This could include much greater awareness of ways citizens can measure air quality, with support for the roll-out of low cost accurate measurement equipment. Organisations concerned about protecting local people could play a part: Women's Institutes, church groups, community organisations, climate groups, parent-teacher groups. An easy-to-use Citizen Science shared database could pool their findings. Initiatives such as Birdwatch show how effective this can be. This could be combined with much-improved methods to share the findings of official local monitoring - at the moment, our local  version of displaying the findings are very difficult for the ordinary citizen to understand. We have sought explanation from our local authority but the actual displays remain very unclear. Much clearer maps showing the monitoring positions are needed, plus graphs of the fundings with colour coding to make clear how they match standards required and tracking over time, to highlight peaks and troughs over the day/week, and draw comparisons with previous years.