31st October 2005, 02:15 PM
We hear a lot of complaint about PPG16, and it certainly has faults, but I reckon its influence has been overwhelmingly for the better. Key benefits:
1 - the people proposing to damage the archaeology have to provide info about it, and have to pay for any excavation etc. This is fair, but also means that they are more likely to take it into account in their decision-making.
2 - the scale of archaeological work required in advance of development went up by an order of magnitude after PPG16. I remember a salutory experience when writing up a PPG16 mitigation dig; all the published parallels were pre-PPG16, and the publicly-funded mitigation done was less than a developer would often do now as an evaluation.
3 - it is now much more likely that the most important sites will be avoided. This is why most evaluations and watching briefs are so unproductive and boring for the participants.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
1 - the people proposing to damage the archaeology have to provide info about it, and have to pay for any excavation etc. This is fair, but also means that they are more likely to take it into account in their decision-making.
2 - the scale of archaeological work required in advance of development went up by an order of magnitude after PPG16. I remember a salutory experience when writing up a PPG16 mitigation dig; all the published parallels were pre-PPG16, and the publicly-funded mitigation done was less than a developer would often do now as an evaluation.
3 - it is now much more likely that the most important sites will be avoided. This is why most evaluations and watching briefs are so unproductive and boring for the participants.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished