Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward additional legislation to regulate wood-burning stoves and bonfires as a result of the health and environmental risks that they pose.

As indicated in the Clean Air Strategy, new emission standards for solid fuel appliances will be introduced from 2022, ensuring only the cleanest new stoves are available for sale. On 7 October 2020, legislation was made that will restrict the sale of the most polluting fuels: bituminous coal, wet wood and high sulphur manufactured solid fuels, from 1 May 2021.

At this time, we have not announced any new measures restricting outdoor burning or to ban bonfires.

We continually work to improve our evidence base and incorporate new & emerging evidence as it becomes available and will consider this as we develop our policy approach moving forward to control emissions of harmful pollutants.