A wide range of jobs fall under the ‘chimney and fireplace’ trade umbrella. They include everything from fireplace and chimney breast removal, external chimney reconstruction and repointing to chimney sweeping, the replacement of liners and the installation of wood burning stoves.

If your chimney needs work doing to it, you should use someone experienced in working on chimneys specifically. That’s because a general builder or bricklayer will sometimes get things wrong. For example, they often put the wrong cowls on – the hood-shaped coverings on top of chimneys. And they need to know how high to build the chimney, too – the cowl needs to be at least 2.3 metres away from the roof. So ideally you should choose someone with lots of experience of working on chimneys on the same type of property to yours.