Middlesbrough Council to Cut Archaeology Funding

[BAJR]

Submitted by Gill Chitty on Fri, 2011-10-07 on the CBA website



Tees Archaeology is at risk of new cuts ? respond to the consultation


Middlesbrough Council plans to withdraw its funding for Tees Archaeology. This is one of a number of local councils that are threatening to opt out of providing archaeology services. The CBA wants to make them think again about what they will be losing.


We are also asking how the Council proposes to meet its obligations as a planning authority to have access to archaeological information in an Historic Environment Record and to have expert advice to inform its planning decisions, in line with national planning policy in PPS5.


Middlesbrough Council has now started a 6-week consultation period on its proposed budget cuts. The consultation period runs to 18 November.


The CBA is asking its members to respond to the consultation and contact Middlesbrough Council to express their support for the important work that Tees Archaeology does and the enormous value that the Council?s modest investment in the service provides. It creates opportunities for local people to be involved with their heritage, contributes to enhancement of neighbourhoods and levers in significant amounts of developer funding to the local economy.


There is more information about why local authorities need archaeology advisers available from the Conservation news page.


http://www.britarch.ac.uk/news/111007-teescuts

[Dinosaur]

Sadly has been on the cards for a while. Shame, a good operation with nice and extremely helpful and knowledgeable people, always a pleasure to do a DBA or whatever on their patch. Hope something of it all survives

[Marcus Brody]

The list of proposed cuts suggests that withdrawal from Tees Archaeology will save ?23,000, which isn't a huge amount of money out of the ?13,800,000 Middlesbrough is trying to save. And didn't Tees Archaeology lose a couple of members of staff fairly recently, presumably in an attempt to reduce the charge to each of the Councils that contribute to the service? If Middlesbrough goes, presumably they'll either have to shed more posts, which I'd imagine would make it difficult to provide a decent level of service as one or two people would be covering the work formerly done by four or five, or they'll have to put up the charge to the other Councils, which is likely to lead more of them to pull out, making the situation worse. I too hope something survives, but I worry that Middlesbrough may just be the first domino, and their withdrawal will result in the other councils deciding that they can't afford the service either.:face-crying: