It’s a bit naughty. But, if you’re selling your house, and you want to bump your energy rating up from, say, a D to a C, and you have an open fireplace, one of those small recessed ones in the bedroom, just pull a wardrobe across it. The EPC assessor won’t see it. They don’t move furniture or really delve much into the fabric of the building. They’ve got 30 minutes and they’re not allowed to do anything intrusive. Badaboom! Your energy rating goes up, your house becomes more desirable, and your purchaser can get a better mortgage rate.

The UK has the oldest housing stock in the world. More than half of our homes were built before 1965 when open fires were the standard form of heating. Gradually, new homes were built with central heating as standard but still a good proportion continued to be built with open fires and chimneys.

According to the University of Liverpool, there are over 11 million homes in England with open chimneys. This figure is derived from the English Housing Survey – there’s different information for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So the total number of homes in the UK will be over 12 million, it’s just hard to get a figure for it and no-one really seems to know. Chimneys just get ignored. I’ve been trying to work with The Energy Saving Trust Ltd for the last 15 years. To begin with, they said that if I got the Chimney Sheep tested by a UKAS approved testing house, and BBA certified, then they would add it to their endorsed products. I got it tested and certified. Let me just say, it’s a lot easier to write those words than to do it. It took several years and tens of thousands of pounds. I got back to The Energy Saving Trust Ltd. They said they didn’t do product endorsing anymore, but they would add information about draught-proofing chimneys on their website. They didn’t.

No one would meet me, no one would take my call. We’re the main manufacturer and retailer of chimney draught excluders in the UK. We also make the Chimney Balloons, in a sheltered workshop in Watford, and we make the magnetic fireplace draught excluders. We enable around 50,000 chimneys to be blocked a year, and we enable our customers to save around 200kg CO₂ per year. Over the years, we have helped to save hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO₂ and millions of pounds. We’ve got a clever graph that calculates all of this, I’ll send you the details when I’ve inputted this year’s sales.

Finally after a lot of persistence on my part I spoke to an amiable man at The Energy Saving Trust Ltd via Zoom 3 years ago. We agreed that there were more open chimneys than unlagged hot water tanks, and that draught-proofing the chimney should be in their top 10 tips on the website. According to the Energy Saving Trust’s own data, draught-proofing the chimney saves £65 a year. So it should be right up there at number 2, underneath draught-proofing doors, windows and floors.

I was assured that this would be done imminently. Guess what didn’t happen?

It’s exhausting trying to get noticed by the authorities. You might ask, why bother? Not that many people pay attention to The Energy Saving Trust Ltd. The trouble is, journalists refer to it all the time. The government advice website refers to it. If The Energy Saving Trust Ltd talked about draught-proofing chimneys like that’s a normal thing that all of us should be doing, it becomes normal. If they ignore it and hardly mention it and don’t tell their staff who answer the helpline to suggest draught-proofing the open chimney before doing anything else, then draught-proofing the chimney remains a fringe and non-standard action.

At Chimney Sheep we’re busy enough, we reach people with open chimneys through our marketing and word of mouth. But, you know, I’m not just doing this because I want to earn a living and give myself stress. I really do care passionately about saving energy, and it bothers me a lot that as a nation we could have cut our emissions by 1% by draught-proofing all the chimneys. And just think how much money could be saved. 2.4 million tonnes of CO₂ and £1,200,000,000 per year. Or, put it another way round, that is how much is being wasted at the moment (that’s based on roughly 12 million homes in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with open chimneys).

Finally I was contacted by the Group Head of Sector Intelligence and External Affairs from The Energy Saving Trust Ltd in July 2025 who said “We cover chimney excluders in our “top ten tips” (in tip #1) which have had significant impact and syndication with broadcast and print media over the last 2 years”.

You can have a look for yourself if you like. They don’t.  Energy Saving Trust Top Ten Tips. 

I tried pointing this out and have been consistently ignored. Finally I got a reply in January that said “While the English Housing Survey suggests just under 27% of homes have at least one open chimney, EPC data for England, Scotland and Wales indicates the figure is closer to 8%.” To paraphrase, the email bluntly stated that there weren’t enough open chimneys in the UK for it to be worth having chimney draught-proofing as a top ten tip and to leave them alone now.

So, according to their own data (they ignored the Liverpool University 11 million figure) one survey states that 6.8 million homes in England alone have open chimneys. Another, (notoriously unreliable one) states 2.3 million homes in England, Scotland and Wales have open chimneys. There’s no reason given for preferring the EPC data over the English Housing Survey.

You might wonder why I keep referring to them as The Energy Saving Trust Ltd. That’s because they are a limited company. Have a look at the Companies House website, there are actually 4 entities under the name Energy Saving Trust.

I tried to find out a bit more about them but because they are a limited company not a public organization it’s harder to get information through a Freedom of Information Request. I did find out that the Scottish government has paid £494,316,709 to The Energy Saving Trust Ltd over the last 5 years. Yes, half a billion pounds. The English government couldn’t tell me how much they had paid. I phrased the FOI request in several different formats and sent it to several different departments. At first I thought they were obfuscating but it seems that no one department actually knows how much our government gives to The Energy Saving Trust Ltd.

This matters. The Energy Saving Trust Ltd is closely associated with Trustmark. There was a scandal recently in which the National Audit Office found that 98% of homes fitted with external wall insulation by Trustmark approved installers needed remediation. The £4bn drive to tackle fuel poverty had instead left many homes unsafe, damp and uninhabitable. There was also suspected fraud worth between £56m and £165m. TrustMark accepted it should have realised the levels of risk involved much sooner. In other words, they kept on doling out grants and commissioning work and ignoring the feedback that this was making the homes worse, not better, until it became a really huge problem.

Energy Saving Trust actively promoted the retrofitting schemes and insisted that only Trustmark approved installers should be used.  

I’m not suggesting that The Energy Saving Trust Ltd are corrupt or anything but my experience with them over the last 15 years has led me to the sad conclusion that as an institution they are entrenched in a rigid mind-set, and, frankly, useless. I don’t think they should be trusted with so much of our money.

The media often talk about the journey to net zero in terms of the cost to society. As a resident of Cockermouth town that has had two catastrophic floods in the last two decades, and many a nail-biting session watching river levels waiting for the next inundation, I’m well aware that the cost of not doing anything is far greater. When hundreds of millions are being spent on energy-saving measures and advice, it is essential that we get good value for money and the right advice.