Housebuilders are being forced to install £1,200 fake chimneys on new homes to meet local planning rules.
Developers are facing demands from councils, including Wealden and Mid-Sussex, in the South East, to build decorative chimneys on homes that do not have fireplaces, including those with heat pumps.
Several local authorities require housebuilders to install the fake chimneys to ensure that new homes fit with the existing local architecture, even as the demands threaten to make building increasingly unaffordable.
Installing one of these chimneys, which tend to be made of glass-reinforced plastic, typically adds £1,200 to the cost of building each home.
One major housebuilder estimated that it had spent half a million pounds installing hundreds of fake chimneys on new homes in the last year alone.
A senior source at the company said: “It is absolutely mad. Try to tell local taxpayers that the money they could be taking from developers is going on fake chimneys. That money could go anywhere else in the local authority.”
Other councils that require builders to install fake chimneys include Uttlesford and Braintree in Essex.
Catherine Williams, planning director at the Home Builders Federation (HBF), said: “It is quite widespread, particularly among more rural or suburban authorities.
“Design offices have myriad requirements and expectations and perhaps do not really understand the cost implications of them.
“They might have a design guide, or it might just be a preference of the design officer.”
She said some local authorities even insist that developers install real brick chimneys, which are more expensive, despite the fact that new homes are rarely built with open fires.
Ms Williams said: “We’re moving to the Future Homes Standard and heat pumps will become far more the norm. Why have a chimney on the outside of your house if you have not got a fire that serves it?”
