17th April 2008, 10:48 AM
I know that the fine for felling a protected tree (i.e. a botanical listing) has recently been increased from ?5,000 to ?50,000. At ?5,000, developers were just seeing the fine as part of the legitimate expense of the business, and it was sometimes cheaper to fell the tree and pay the fine rather than work around it. Perhaps a similar order of magnitude increase is needed for the built/archaeological environment...