Yes Moreno i am familiar with the text. However how can the TAct be modified or rather the definitions of Treasure to capture such items. It may be one thing to add Roman Parade helmets to the list ,but the frequency of discovery mentioned somewhere being one every hundred years or so makes such a provision a bit of a knee jerker.
I know that the intents of some lobbyists are to seek to include a wide variety of items as Treasure in the forthcoming Review yet conveniently forget that someone else picks up the expense of servicing such high ideals in both reward terms to finders and landowners and the processing, expert report writing and so on. The Treasure system struggles to cope with the present expectations placed upon it and to add that 2011 seems to have been another record year for Treasure finds, it would be somewhat churlish to add to the burden an increase in definitions of what is Treasure without good evidence of such need and an appropriate increase in funding for administration and so on.
The last Spending Review took away from the PAS the funds it needed to better service the increasing number of finds available for recording and has lead to its stagnation despite publicity grabbing headlines of record numbers of finds recorded. This is not a true picture of the situation yet the PAS needs to produce such headlines to justify its continued funding to its political masters which perhaps makes a change from the old days under the MLA when it had to constantly reinvent itself to survive. I see the role of the PAS as essential in recording more and more finds by agreement rather than to use the blunt instrument of the TAct to do this by statute for the more mundane and common items being pushed for as Treasure by some high profile lobbyists.
I know that the intents of some lobbyists are to seek to include a wide variety of items as Treasure in the forthcoming Review yet conveniently forget that someone else picks up the expense of servicing such high ideals in both reward terms to finders and landowners and the processing, expert report writing and so on. The Treasure system struggles to cope with the present expectations placed upon it and to add that 2011 seems to have been another record year for Treasure finds, it would be somewhat churlish to add to the burden an increase in definitions of what is Treasure without good evidence of such need and an appropriate increase in funding for administration and so on.
The last Spending Review took away from the PAS the funds it needed to better service the increasing number of finds available for recording and has lead to its stagnation despite publicity grabbing headlines of record numbers of finds recorded. This is not a true picture of the situation yet the PAS needs to produce such headlines to justify its continued funding to its political masters which perhaps makes a change from the old days under the MLA when it had to constantly reinvent itself to survive. I see the role of the PAS as essential in recording more and more finds by agreement rather than to use the blunt instrument of the TAct to do this by statute for the more mundane and common items being pushed for as Treasure by some high profile lobbyists.