Your neighbour is mistaken about expecting to be told when they bought their house about your wood burner. Standard property searches tend to reveal information about the house being bought and not neighbouring houses.
Wood burners are also subject to building regulations. It is a legal requirement to notify any installation in England and Wales to the local authority either via a certified installer, such as someone who has been through the HETAS competent persons scheme.
A wood burner which has not been installed properly is much more likely to be found a “nuisance”.
In legal terms, under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 a statutory nuisance occurs when an activity detracts from a person’s enjoyment of their own property or causes, or is likely to cause, a risk to health. A local authority can investigate and if a statutory nuisance is found, an abatement notice intended to stop the activity can be served.
Excessive smoke would fall into the type of activity a local authority could investigate as a possible statutory nuisance. Whether it is or not will turn on the facts of the case.
Rumours of definite plans to ban wood burners soon are not true. In its Environmental Improvement Plan, published in 2023, the present Government ruled out a full ban, citing the reliance of many households on solid fuel as the reason.
But of course, the political landscape and who makes the law, can change. It seems the future battle ground is likely to be on particle emissions. Which means for now and hopefully in the future, the law is on your side, so long as you burn permitted fuel in a properly installed appliance.
Nevertheless, the law being on your side does not prevent you from being a good neighbour and offering to let your neighbours know when you plan to use your wood-burner so they can mitigate the apparent trigger for asthma as best they can such as taking an inhaler or shutting windows may help maintain cordial relations, not least because any neighbour dispute is disclosable if you sell your house.
‘Ask a lawyer’ should not be taken as formal legal advice, but rather as a starting point for readers to undertake their own further research.
