A chimney stack is the part of the chimney you see above the roof. The chimney breast is the part you see inside the house, the brick mass that projects from a wall and carries the flues up from the fireplace. People often say "chimney removal" and mean either one, or both, and the rules are not the same for each.
Owners ask to remove a stack for good reasons. The fireplace below has been blocked up for years. The stack leans, leaks or needs pointing again, and the repair bill is hard to justify. Or the stack is tall, awkward and costly to scaffold every time something goes wrong. Removing it can solve all of that, and the roof is left with one fewer joint to leak.
Before anyone lifts a brick, though, four questions need answers. Does the work touch the breast? Is the stack on a wall you share with a neighbour? Is the house listed, or in a conservation area with an Article 4 direction? And what will the roof look like when the stack has gone? This guide takes each in turn, and points to the council or your building control body where the answer is theirs to give.
Stack above the roof, breast below it
The two parts of a chimney do different jobs, and the law treats them differently. The breast sits inside the house and is part of its structure. In many houses it also supports the weight of the stack above it, and in some it helps to hold up the floors or the wall around it. The stack above the roof carries nothing except its own weight and the pots, though it is tied into the roof and, in a pair of houses, may be tied into the neighbour's roof as well.
Removing a breast is major structural work. Removing only the stack, down to the roof line or just under it, is a smaller job that touches the roof but leaves the breast and the flues beneath it in place. Many owners start by asking for the second and later decide on the first, so it pays to be clear from the start which one you mean.
Why the breast changes the answer
If the breast is taken out from the ground floor upwards, what is above it needs holding up some other way. If the breast is taken out in the room but the stack stays on the roof, the stack above must be supported too. That support is designed for the particular house, built carefully and inspected, and it is why the first question we ask is whether you want the breast gone as well.
If the breast has already been taken out, our page on a chimney breast that has been removed explains what to check about the stack still standing above it. If the stack is leaning and you are weighing removal against repair, read the guide to a leaning chimney stack alongside this one. And if you are considering repair instead, when a stack needs rebuilding sets out what that involves.
Building Regulations for breasts and stacks
The Planning Portal is plain about the breast. The Planning Portal says approval always applies to breast removal, since the breast is structural. There is no size or condition below which you can skip it. That means an application to your building control body, which is either a registered building control approver or the council's own team, and the work is inspected at set stages.
For the stack, the Planning Portal's answer is less definite: the rules may differ if you are removing the chimney stack alone. We read that as a reason to ask, not a reason to assume. What counts is what the work does. Taking a stack off and leaving the breast alone changes the roof structure where the stack passed through it, and building control can tell you whether it wants to see an application before the work begins.
What the application covers
For a breast, the application normally shows how the remaining masonry or the floors above will be supported, how the flues will be dealt with and how the gap will be made good. Adur and Worthing Councils share one building control team, based at Worthing Town Hall, and its own pages say it cannot offer design advice since the national changes of April 2024. Your designer, builder or engineer therefore prepares the proposal and the team checks it.
We explain consent and handle the building control notification where the work needs it, so you are not left to chase the paperwork. A completion certificate matters at sale, as a purchaser's conveyancer often asks to see one. Keep it with the deeds. Keep any engineer's calculations with it too.
If you are unsure whether your job counts, the quickest route is a short call to building control with the address and a plain description of the work. See also our page on permission to remove a chimney.
Party walls and a shared stack
Many houses in Worthing and the coastal towns are terraced or semi-detached, and the stack often sits on the wall between two homes. Such a stack serves flues from both sides, or at least stands on a wall that belongs to both of you in the eyes of the Party Wall Act.
Taking chimneys off a party wall is on the government's list of notifiable building works. If your stack is on one, you must give your neighbour written notice. The guidance says the neighbour must receive it in writing, with a gap of two months or more before the start and a year at most. A neighbour who says nothing has not agreed, and the matter then follows the formal route the Act sets out.
What this means in practice
Talk to the neighbour first, before any paper arrives. A friendly conversation about scaffold dates and the noise saves a good deal of worry. Then serve the notice properly, allowing the full period. We would not start on a stack that sits on a shared wall until the notice side is settled, since a dispute costs far more than a few weeks' wait.
Practical points follow from the shared flue. Taking the stack off one side must leave the neighbour's flues sound, ventilated and weatherproof. Their pots may need re-bedding, and their half of the stack may need to be rebuilt to a safe height once yours is gone. Our page on the shared chimney stack looks at how the costs and responsibilities are usually divided.
Planning, conservation areas and Article 4
Planning is a separate question from Building Regulations, and the answer depends on where the house stands. For an ordinary house outside any special area, taking a stack off is a question of Building Regulations and, where it applies, the party wall. The extra layers come in three places.
Conservation areas with an Article 4 direction
An Article 4 direction withdraws chosen permitted development rights, so an application is required for whatever the direction names. Several local directions deal with chimneys directly. The Old Shoreham (ADC09) and Kingston Buci (ADC08) directions, both brought in during early 2023, remove Class G anywhere on the dwelling. Class G deals with chimney, flue and soil pipe work. The Warwick Gardens direction in Worthing (WBC08) lists chimney work too, whether the chimney is built, changed or taken away. If your address falls inside one of these areas, ask Adur and Worthing planning before work starts.
Other conservation areas have no direction on chimneys, and some directions deal only with walls, hard surfaces or gates, so do not assume. Look up the address rather than guess.
Listed buildings
Under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, work that changes the special character of a listed house needs listed building consent. Taking away a chimney stack that forms part of a listed roofscape is the kind of alteration the council will want to look at, and doing the work without consent is an offence. The council also lists repairs in non-matching materials as needing consent. Our page on listed chimney repairs covers the repair side.
Inside the National Park
If the house stands inside the South Downs National Park, the National Park Authority can be the planning authority in place of the district council, so contact the authority first.
What the roof looks like afterwards
When a stack comes off, the roof has to be closed over the gap. That is where much of the work, and much of the quality, sits. The stack is taken down to below the roof covering. Any timbers that were trimmed around it are reworked so the rafters carry their load again, and the area is boarded, felted and covered to match the rest of the slope. The lead flashings that sealed the stack are stripped, and the surrounding tiles or slates are relaid.
Matching the covering is the visible part. On an older roof, the tiles around the stack have often weathered to a different colour, and fresh tiles will look new until the weather catches them up. Where the original covering is sound we reuse it to fill the gap, taking from somewhere less visible. On a slate or stone roof the same rule applies: the roof's own material comes first.
Flues, ventilation and the breast inside
If the breast stays inside the house, the flues are still there. Closing them off at the top without ventilation can bring damp and staining into the room below, since the breast has no way to dry out. A vent at the base of the flue, or ventilated terminals at the top, is the usual remedy, and our guide to damp on a chimney breast covers what to watch for.
Mortar matters for what is left behind. If your stack is part of an older house, the joints below the roof line are probably lime, and the repairs should match them. See lime mortar on old chimneys for why.
Removal is final. Once a stack has gone, putting it back means a full rebuild. If you are weighing it up, we photograph the stack and its junction with the roof and set out the options with and without removal.
Cost, scaffold and the alternatives to removal
The price of removing a stack varies a great deal from house to house, and the written quote fixes it after the survey. What it depends on is plain: how tall the stack stands, how many flues it carries, whether it is shared, the covering on the roof and whether the breast is coming out too. A short stack on a bungalow is a modest job. A tall central stack on a three-storey Victorian terrace, with a lead-lined valley beside it, is not.
Scaffolding is the cost that surprises people most. MyBuilder (updated 21/08/2026) gives a typical UK range of £400 to £900 for scaffolding a chimney. If the poles must go up on the public footway, the scaffolders need a licence from the highway authority, and that takes notice. When you compare quotes, see whether VAT and scaffolding are in each.
The alternatives
Removal is one option among several for a stack that has stopped earning its place. A disused flue can be capped and ventilated, as our guide to capping a chimney explains. A stack that has grown too tall can be made shorter. Or it can be rebuilt as it is, and MyBuilder's typical range for a rebuild is £2,000 to £10,000+, so removal is not automatically the cheaper path once the roof repair, scaffold and paperwork are added up.
Once surveyed, you get a single written price, with photographs of the stack where it meets the roof. A guarantee on the workmanship, running ten years, comes in writing too. When the job ends we clear away the debris and the waste leaves with us. Our chimney repairs page sets out the wider service.
