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Rural burning – I've had enough

Mars · 2026-05-31T09:04:42Z

I'm going to have a rant! We live in the countryside (beautiful, yes) but every few weeks we get absolutely smoked out by what I can only assume is industrial-scale burning from neighbouring farms and a garden centre. This weekend has been horrendous. Forty-eight hours of thick, acrid smoke filling the entire valley. Every window in the house shut all weekend. Our bedroom air purifier on red, continuously, for two days straight. Both my wife and I have had splitting headaches and we feel ill. And I'm not talking about a pleasant woodsmoke smell here. It starts that way (maybe) but then the colour of the smoke changes and it gets greyer and darker and the smell turns chemical and honestly quite revolting. I'd put good money on plastic and/or chemicals going into that fire. Which means we're breathing toxins. PM2.5 particulate matter. Whatever other poisonous rubbish is being chucked on there. What really gets me is the timing. It doesn't happen every weekend. Every few weeks. But it almost always starts on a Friday afternoon. Always. And it's always done and dusted by Monday morning. You don't need me to join those dots. If you're burning legitimate waste within the rules, you don't need to wait for a Friday afternoon to do it. They know exactly what they're putting on that fire and they know exactly why the weekend suits them. I called the authorities this weekend. Twice. I won't bore you with how that went. But here's the thing that is driving me insane. We live in a country where ordinary homeowners are made to feel guilty about everything that burns. Wood burning stoves are practically a moral failing now. We debate biomass carbon accounting. We're all being pushed toward heat pumps and clean air and net zero. Rightly so. But apparently none of that applies if you've got acres of fields. Then you can just burn whatever the hell you like all weekend while your neighbours choke, and nobody in authority seems to have the slightest interest in doing anything about it. It's absolute madness. Has anyone else dealt with this? And does anyone actually know if there's any real recourse, because right now it feels like there isn't any.

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Mars

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Topic starter 01/06/2026 3:04 pm

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

↑

I might be mistaken but I thought the Fire Brigade would be quite happy being told of a plume of smoke that doesn't look right

We spoke to them yesterday. Supervisor called us back and said unless the fire was out of control, they could even not be allowed on the land if the owner doesn't permit them entry.

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Mars

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Topic starter 01/06/2026 3:09 pm

@transparent, environmental protection emailed earlier today saying they'd called to discuss. Still waiting to hear back and curious what their take will be given what the drone footage shows.

The local politics around this are interesting, to put it diplomatically. Our ward councillor is close friends with the landowner and the neighbouring farmer... they all went to school together. We only found this out after a separate complaint years ago, when we discovered he'd gone straight back to the farmer and told him we'd complained. So he won't be getting a call from me on this! 😆

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