12th September 2005, 02:54 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by muddy
It is only right and fair that the polluter pays. However, a fairer system (and one that I know has been mooted in the past) is that all applications are judged upon archaeological merit. The developer would then be charged a fee dependant upon size and archaeology to central body (EH for the sake of arguement), with a contingency for emergence work. The central body would then be responible for paying for the work.
This scheme would the effect that larger developments would, in general pay more; there would be funds available for rescue; and units would have to apply seperately to the central organisation for funds for post-ex , not the developer (quality control)
It's a nice idea, and one that would provide a neat answer to the conflict between the 'polluter pays' principle and the public (rather than private) provision of archaeological services.
One problem though - you would still have a strong corporate lobbying operation to keep the fee down, but instead of lobbying about individual cases by individual companies (usually relatively weak, especially if there are good precedents) you would get collective lobbying by industry groups (usually much more powerful and influential). The proportion of the cost paid by the developer would be squeezed, and the rest would come out of public funds. The whole process would be compounded by the general political bias (in all 3 main parties) against regulation.
The effect would be that public funds would be short, and we'd be back to the bad old pre-PPG16 days, when most 'rescue' excavations saved no more of the site than we would look at in an evaluation nowadays.
Speaking of which - under this scheme, how would evaluations be paid for?
1man1desk
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