22nd March 2013, 10:32 AM
Quote:The massive subsidies to developers announced in the budget might mean more archaeology as well.Call me a pessimist, but it's more likely that archaeology planning guidance will be relaxed. With local government cuts, there are barely enough staff to deal with current development workload. Any increase will cause the system to start folding. Rather than hold up all this economy-boosting development until the archaeology has been properly considered/dealt with, it's more likely that the requirements will be loosened (or done away with under some circumstances).
If the archaeology on the HS2 route was done to decent standards under current guidance, it might hold that project up for decades (lots of archaeology/not enough archaeologists). Be interesting to see the compromises which will be made there.