Wood Heat News: July 2026

The numbers moved in stove owners’ favour this fortnight. Defra’s latest air quality data has England running ahead of schedule on fine particle pollution, the advertising watchdog has quietly rewritten one of its stove rulings, and the trade has locked in tougher rules for who is allowed to fit your appliance. Here is what happened and why it matters if you heat with wood.

Defra’s 2025 figures put England ahead of its PM2.5 target

Defra’s 2025 air quality statistics show 111 of 114 English monitoring stations, 97%, now meet the legal 2040 target of 10 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre, and that population exposure has fallen 26% since 2018, closing on the 30% interim goal set for 2030. Urban background levels are down 35% since 2009. HETAS chief executive Barry Cope said England is “genuinely closing in on its 2030 air quality target with several years to spare”. The data still shows a clear PM2.5 bump around 9pm, which lines up with households burning solid fuel in the evening, so how you burn is doing more of the talking now than whether you burn at all. The practical takeaway is the cheap one: a certified appliance and dry wood cut particulate sharply versus an open fire on damp logs. Our firewood seasoning time calculator tells you when your logs drop below the 20% moisture mark. HETAS’s write-up is here.

ASA reissues its Stove Industry Association ruling

The Advertising Standards Authority has published a revised version of a November 2025 ruling against the Stove Industry Association, after an Independent Review found the original decision had read national emissions data “per appliance” rather than as an aggregate. The corrected ruling strips out the specific PM2.5 and carbon monoxide comparison figures that rested on that misreading, though both complaints against the SIA’s “very low emission” and “significantly lower emissions” claims stay upheld on other grounds. For buyers, the signal is that marketing claims about clean burning now need tighter substantiation, so treat headline efficiency figures with care and ask what real-world conditions they assume rather than lab-only results. HETAS covers the revised ruling here.

Installer competencies for solid fuel become mandatory

HETAS, which chairs the solid fuel and biomass working group, confirmed on 8 July that the sector’s technical competencies have been formally published and have shifted from “Minimum” to “Mandatory”. The MTCs set out what a competent stove or biomass installation actually requires and underpin the training, assessment and registration that Self-Certification Scheme installers work to. Alan Young, HETAS head of quality and assurance, called it “the most significant development our sector has seen in years”. If you are booking an installation, this reinforces the basic rule of thumb: use a scheme-registered installer so the work is signed off and Building Regulations compliant, not a general handyman. HETAS explains the change here. Sizing the appliance correctly comes first, and our wood burning stove size calculator gets you to a sensible kW figure before an installer walks through the door.