GUIDANCE FOR CLIENTS PROFESSIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY | A GUIDE FOR CLIENTS 2024 13 In planning policy, all historic environment assets are material considerations. (Photo: Wessex) ARCHAEOLOGY, PLANNING POLICY AND LEGISLATION Governments recognise the historic environment is a fragile resource and have adopted policies for understanding its significance and for ensuring its appropriate management. The interests of different parties involved in the management of the historic environment are not always aligned. In many parts of the world, the planning systems and legislation relating to heritage provide a framework for mediation of those interests. They recognise that landowners have rights to do as they wish with their property, but that those rights may need to be constrained if changes planned to benefit the owner will have particularly damaging effects on resources that are important to society at large. This concept of balancing conflicting needs involves weighing benefits with potential impoverishment of society’s resources for future use. Where the demand for development is found to outweigh the need for preservation of the historic environment, destruction of assets can be permitted, provided that their loss is offset by an improved understanding of what happened in the past, which we gain through excavation or other types of investigation. All historic environment assets, whether designated or not, are material considerations. The spatial planning processes in the UK, for example, involve a regularly used series of steps or phases to manage change in the historic environment. Any professional archaeologist you appoint will be familiar with these steps, although they may only have experience of a particular step themselves and may need to pass you on to a different expert as the project progresses. Legislation and policy relating to archaeology and the historic environment are complex and frequently change. If you need to understand the legal context for the archaeological work you are doing, an appropriately skilled professional archaeologist can advise you.
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