12th July 2014, 10:23 PM
Marc Berger Wrote:Society demands that a developer pays to undertake archaeology in return for permission to develop.
First problem - at the moment "society" isn't doing much demanding! (We let the Eton mob scrap most of our Planning system since the ConDemNation got in...)
Quote:This production has a cost which the developers bare but which also reflects the price of the production of the archaeology.
So the developer pays the cost of the excavation? This is what happens now. To make a difference, it would have to be "open chequebook" instead of "lowest tender".
Quote:We then say to society if you want this development at the cost to the environment here is the price (and we might charge more if we found good stuff) and the difficult bit is if they don't want it we chuck it in the bin but I would rather we saw it that any authorising authority was a polluter and insist that they pay for the archaeology.
So "society" pays for post-ex, archiving, and publication? Not likely, but then again I'd vote for a system where ALL the archaeology was done by the State, with developers made to stand aside and wait until we had sterilised their site to our satisfaction, and then they pay a levy (say 5% of total development cost?) towards a central pot that supports all the work of this State department around the country...
Without a major change away from the current weak Planning system and cut-throat tendering, nothing's gonna improve.