Now that Halloween is over, that time of year is fast approaching. No, not the C-word, but bonfire night! One of the few nights of the year where fireworks brighten up the night sky with beautiful shapes and colours and where family and friends gather to create huge, blazing bonfires, but are they legal and are you allowed to have a bonfire in your garden? 

With a lot of rules and guidelines in place at the moment due to COVID-19, it can be quite difficult to follow exactly what you can and can't do in regards to having a bonfire in your garden. So, to make things a little clearer, we have outlined what you can do in this blog post. Read on to find out more!

As long as your bonfire is carefully planned, it can be an environmentally-friendly way of removing any garden waste that you may have collected over the course of the year. They can also be great fun, creating winter memories that last a lifetime but like most things, there are laws and rules that you must abide by. 

 

Bonfire Laws

There are no laws specifically forbidding domestic bonfires in the UK; however, there are laws regarding any consequential nuisances that are caused as a result of the bonfire. Here is what the government says:

  • You're not allowed to burn household waste if it will cause pollution or harm the health of others.
  • Your local council can issue an 'abatement notice' (a notice served by the council's environmental health department informing a person responsible for a statutory nuisance to take steps needed to stop the nuisance) if a bonfire is causing a nuisance.
  • You can be fined up to £5,000 if you do not adhere to the notice. 

In light of these laws, the occasional bonfire is perfectly acceptable as long as there are no local bylaws in place that stops you from having one and they do not cause a nuisance.  It's best practice to just double-check the local laws before committing to a bonfire in your garden.

 

Garden Bonfire Tips

To make sure you cause the least amount of fuss possible when having a bonfire in your garden, be sure to follow these two very important tips:

  • Ensure the smoke from your bonfire doesn't blow across a road and so cause danger to the traffic passing by.
  • You do not burn anything that could result in pollution or harm to public health. This includes burning anything like rubber, plastic and engine oil. 
  • Inform your neighbours in advance to give them an opportunity to prepare e.g. closing their windows or taking their clothes off the line.
  • Never leave your bonfire unsupervised and ensure you have emergency measures in place just in case the fire gets out of control. 
  • Do not let any children or animals get too close to the bonfire.
  • Select an appropriate spot for your bonfire, ensuring it is not directly under any phone lines, overhanging trees or fences and bushes that may catch fire. 
  • Once the occasion is over, ensure all embers are extinguished to avoid them from relighting.  

For more guidance on garden bonfires, please visit GOV.UK.

 

The above guidance relates to the general laws and rules surrounding having bonfires in your garden, however, with a lot of new national and local laws now in place due to COVID-19, there may be further rules that you may need to remind yourself about, in particular surrounding how many people you can have in your garden and who in fact can even attend.  

To keep up to speed with the latest rules surrounding COVID-19, please click here. For everything AlfrescoPlus, be sure to follow us across all of our socials below. 

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