News Release

Embargo: not for publication until 00.01 am Friday 15 February

PRIVATE SECTOR FOOTS HALF THE BILL FOR TODAY'S ARCHAEOLOGY

The amount of professional archaeology being undertaken in England has increased dramatically over the last decade, with private companies by far and away the biggest funders, according to new research. But the injection of private money is making the popular activity 'weakly regulated and market-led' with accumulating problems.

A new report by Kenneth Aitchison, for the Cultural Trends journal, shows that well over half of the £120 million spent on professional archaeological practice in 2000 came from private sources. The £68.3 million committed in 2000 compares with only £58,000 committed in 1978.

The sum dwarfs expenditure by other public bodies, such as the £11 million a year from English Heritage and £25 million from local authorities, both of which have declined in real terms over recent years.

The growth in private expenditure is due to the requirements of the planning system on developers. Since 1990, this has allowed planners to order developers to fund the protection or recording of significant remains.

The predominance of private funding has led to a number of problems:

• Developers almost always use the cheapest contractor under competitive tendering, leading to fears about the quality of some excavations and a lack of cooperation amongst archaeological contractors.
• The planning guidance concerned - PPG 16 - is not statutory, and the advice it contains can be disregarded by local councillors, leading to the destruction of remains considered archaeologically important.
• Important archaeological remains are being destroyed by developers who undertake work without full planning permission with little or no penalty;
• Local authorities can be reluctant to enforce planning conditions after construction, which means that commitments to analyse and publish important data can be broken with impunity;
• Rather than being respected as a source of information about the ways that people lived in the past, archaeological remains can be treated as a form of site contamination by developers, which specialists are brought in to 'clean up.'

The report is the first study to quantify archaeological funding from all sources in the last decade.

'Archaeology is increasingly popular, with successful TV shows and museum exhibitions,' said Kenneth Aitchison. 'But even though private funding has allowed a great expansion of archaeological work to take place, we have had to pay a significant cost in terms of threats to quality, knowledge and accessibility of remains.'

Contact: Michelle McNally, PSI, on 020 7468 2201

Notes to Editors

1. Cultural Trends is published by the Policy Studies Institute. Cultural Trends 39 is available from Taylor and Francis on 01256 813000 priced £41; Press copies of Cultural Trends 39 are available from the PSI Press Office on 020 7468 0468.

2. Kenneth Aitchison has been Project Archaeologist at ARCUS (Archaeological Research and Consultancy at the University of Sheffield) and is now Head of Training and Standards at the Institute of Field Archaeologists.

3. PSI is a registered charity and has no association with any political party, pressure group or commercial interest.

4. The next issue of Cultural Trends will cover the media and participation in the arts.