PPG 16 - PPG 16 in Practice

PPG 16 in Practice

All forms of archaeological investigation undertaken through PPG 16 are funded by the developer through an extension of the Polluter Pays principle, although this is not made explicit in the document itself. The work is intended to be undertaken in advance of any planning consent being granted but often happens to satisfy a planning condition placed on an application for development, that is once the principle of development on the land has already been established.

Because of the potential for destruction of significant remains, PPG 16 prefers evaluation to take place in advance of any planning decision being made. A developer tenders for the work to be done and chooses an archaeological organization to retain. The work is monitored by a curator, normally the County Archaeologist, who is nominated by the local planning authority as an adviser and who also identifies sites where archaeology might be threatened by development. Following submission of a satisfactory site report and demonstration that a site's archaeological potential has been properly safeguarded and/or recorded, the curator will usually advise that development can continue.

Curators maintain a Sites and Monuments Record or SMR, a database of known archaeological sites which is often used to inform decisions on archaeological potential. Areas of archaeological potential are often drawn on GIS maps which can indicate any potentially damaging development automatically.

PPG 16 has resulted in an explosion in archaeological fieldwork in the UK. Developer funding has led to dozens of archaeological organizations competing for work along with archaeological consultants working for developers to oversee projects. This has contributed to the growing professionalization of archaeology from its more ad hoc earlier incarnation as Rescue archaeology. Also, a wider variety of archaeological methods are now employed including surveys of large areas for the purposes of Historic Landscape Characterisation, deposit models and the production of regional archaeological research agendas.