16th February 2007, 01:58 PM
The issue of access to land, raised by previous contributors to this debate, may be key to this problem site.
The position is this:
Access to land is required to enable surveys to take place. At the pre-determination stage, the land will all still be in private ownership.
Normal practice is to seek access to land by agreement. However, in the event that a particular landowner is uncooperative, under the Highways Act the relevant Highways Authority has the power to serve a notice enforcing access. Crucially, this power is largely limited to surveys that would not disturb the ground - the only exception is for geotechnical investigations.
This means that if a particular landowner doesn't want trial trenching on his land, it can't be enforced. The mechanism suggested by Unit of 1 wouldn't work, because it is just a more complicated way of setting things up with a landowner who does want to let you on.
Under these circumstances, the only thing you can reasonably do is identify the area that you wanted to trench but couldn't as a risk area and make provision to investigate it post-CPO. Unfortunately, this is too late in the process to allow redesign to avoid unexpectedly significant discoveries. It is both possible and common practice on well-managed projects, however, to have a 'risk pot' of money available to cover all sorts of environmental and other contingencies (mostly non-archaeological, of course).
If the risk has been flagged up and an allowance made for it, then there shouldn't be a problem with getting the money to beef up the mitigation work once you realise you've got something bigger than expected on your hands.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
The position is this:
Access to land is required to enable surveys to take place. At the pre-determination stage, the land will all still be in private ownership.
Normal practice is to seek access to land by agreement. However, in the event that a particular landowner is uncooperative, under the Highways Act the relevant Highways Authority has the power to serve a notice enforcing access. Crucially, this power is largely limited to surveys that would not disturb the ground - the only exception is for geotechnical investigations.
This means that if a particular landowner doesn't want trial trenching on his land, it can't be enforced. The mechanism suggested by Unit of 1 wouldn't work, because it is just a more complicated way of setting things up with a landowner who does want to let you on.
Under these circumstances, the only thing you can reasonably do is identify the area that you wanted to trench but couldn't as a risk area and make provision to investigate it post-CPO. Unfortunately, this is too late in the process to allow redesign to avoid unexpectedly significant discoveries. It is both possible and common practice on well-managed projects, however, to have a 'risk pot' of money available to cover all sorts of environmental and other contingencies (mostly non-archaeological, of course).
If the risk has been flagged up and an allowance made for it, then there shouldn't be a problem with getting the money to beef up the mitigation work once you realise you've got something bigger than expected on your hands.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished