Removing archaeology from the planning system will make society poorer.
On 30 June 2020 the UK Prime Minister set out a vision for a post-Covid future for Britain. The vision included: ‘the most radical reforms to our planning system [in England] since the end of the Second World War’ with a view to eliminating ‘delays’ which ‘are a massive drag on the productivity and prosperity of this country’. The argument that planning is a hindrance to development has been made before, and refuted before. Only last week the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists noted that ‘development is much more likely to be blocked by land prices, construction costs and land banking than by planning restrictions. Evidence for planning regulation preventing development is anecdotal at best, and unfounded ideological rhetoric at worst.’
So where does archaeology fit into this, and why are these ‘radical reforms’ a real danger — not just to archaeologists but to the wellbeing of the society they serve?
Archaeology is a set of tools for understanding the past in the present. It has evolved over many generations to embrace a wide range of humanities- and science-based disciplines, and has also moved outside the narrow confines of academia into the real world of planning and development. In the UK this process began in the post-war rebuilding of the 1950s and 1960s, but really took off with the introduction of ‘polluter pays’ legislation in the 1990s. This applied thinking in addressing concerns about the natural environment to what we now call the ‘historic environment’: at its heart was the notion that the developer responsible for damaging archaeology should take measures to mitigate or minimise that damage — either by avoiding the archaeology altogether (preservation in situ) or by paying for archaeologists to excavate, understand and interpret it (preservation by record). The language has evolved over time — we now talk about development-driven archaeology rather than ‘polluters’ for example — but the basic role of archaeology in the planning system has not.
The UK spatial planning system is a way of controlling a finite amount of land, ensuring that what is built meets the needs of local populations. For the most part, decisions about who can build what where are made by local planning authorities (LPAs), whose local development plans (LDPs) create frameworks for this decision making. These LDPs take into account projected population growth and demographics, looking ahead 5, 10 or 20 years to ensure that the right numbers of houses, schools and shops are being built to serve the local population. Regulations also ensure that different businesses are kept separate (a foundry will not be next door to a restaurant), and that there is adequate drainage, enough capacity in transport infrastructure and so on. At the same time national planning policies provide frameworks and structures for the protection of the environment in its many forms: air quality, water quality, species protection, safeguarded habitats (including the provision of ‘green belts’), and of course the historic environment.
The historic environment in planning terms covers a range of things. One important element are ‘designated’ assets. Above ground this means historic buildings (or groups of buildings), and these are protected by being ‘listed’ — literally placed on a list maintained by the LPA. Listed buildings are ranked in terms of their significance — Grade I, II or II*. On a broader scale areas of historic character are protected by Conservation Areas. These designations often containing many listed buildings; their purpose is to protect the general setting from intrusive development. Below ground archaeology is ‘designated’ by ‘scheduling’ — literally a ‘schedule’ of ‘ancient monuments’ maintained by central government.
Since the 1990s thinking about the protection of the historic environment has moved on and become more flexible. So-called ‘designations’ like listing or scheduling continue to carry great weight, of course, but ‘undesignated assets’ have also become a material consideration in planning terms. Such undesignated assets might include buildings of local significance but not especially old or not of national architectural significance: they may for example have associations with individuals or episodes in local history. Perhaps the largest and most unknown ‘undesignated asset’ is the archaeology below the ground of all of the UK’s towns and cities.
Thanks to that 1990s legislation archaeology is firmly established as a material consideration in planning terms. This has been very effective in striking a balance between vibrant sustainable development and protecting archaeology and cultural heritage, as a recent review by Historic England demonstrated.
What’s more, the definition of archaeology has shifted markedly in that time. Archaeology today includes everything up to and including the early 21st century — cold war installations, 1920s factories, Victorian housing and many more prosaic things too — as well as medieval, Roman and prehistoric remains. This is actually a result of archaeology being part of the planning process. Vastly more archaeological work has been done in the last 30 years than ever before, and largely by a young, intelligent, cosmopolitan and intellectually curious workforce who were not afraid to challenge the definitions of archaeology set by an older generation. This prompted a huge surge of ‘historical archaeology’ — the archaeology of the more recent past — in urban areas particularly. This highlighted the stories of groups and individuals that had been ignored by conventional history. The lives of working class people, women, children, immigrants, prostitutes and the poor and oppressed generally were being told by the material that they had left behind, and in some cases by the human remains themselves.
This has been an exciting time for archaeology, which has reinvented itself and opened the world of the past to new generations and new audiences. But now it is under threat.
The government proposes to replace the existing planning arrangements in England. (It is important to note that arrangements in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will not be affected.) The details of the proposals for England are not yet known, but two reports by the Policy Exchange thinktank give an idea of what might be about to come. In January 2020 Policy Exchange published ‘Rethinking the Planning System for the 21st Century’. This was followed in June by a collection of essays outlining ‘an urgent need for bold reform’. Their proposal replaced the sophisticated and nuanced landscape of case-by-case assessment of individual sites (including their archaeological potential and contribution to the historic environment), with a system of just two ‘zones’. Places will be zoned as either suitable for new development, or not suitable for new development.
The Policy Exchange have suggested that ‘heritage’, including historic buildings, archaeology and presumably other elements of the historic environment, will play a part in identifying those areas which are going to be excluded from new development. But these proposals will create much wider problems for society.
The ‘zone’ system shifts the onus onto proving that archaeology does exist rather than confirming that it does not. Areas could be so designated because archaeology is known, rather than because of its potential. As the Historic England review of archaeology in the current planning system makes clear: ‘the quantity, range and significance of new discoveries … is striking’. And yet these discoveries were made without any serious impediment to development and construction. Indeed in 2018 the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers found that only around 4% of all planning applications have archaeological implications, and less than 0.01% of planning applications cite archaeology as a reason for refusal.
As Historic England point out, ‘it is clear that the effective use of planning policies is delivering significant new knowledge about all periods of human history across the country’ — and particularly in the north of England. If archaeology is not being done then effectively our understanding of the past will become fossilised within the frameworks, parameters and world views of 2020.
The implication is that ‘archaeology’ as defined now is going to be what we regard to be important in the future. Where would we be now if our understanding of archaeology had been fossilised in 1960? There would be no feminist archaeology, no archaeology of colonialism (and no understanding of archaeology as an extension of the colonialist project), and indeed no archaeology of anything after about 1500. Even if we had stood still since 1990, then we would never have learnt about Shakepeare’s theatres or found the remains of a King Richard III. But — and arguably more importantly — we would have very little to say about the lives of ordinary people too poor or marginalised to feature in the authorised historical records.
One of archaeology’s great strengths is its ability to question the received historical wisdom, and to throw light on those darker aspects of the country’s past. These are the bread and butter of development-driven archaeological practice, and they are also quite often the most interesting bits of archaeology that tell forgotten stories about ordinary people. Of course this includes issues that we have been discussing in recent weeks and months — such as the legacies of slavery and colonialism on our present-day institutions and structures. A ‘radical reform’ of the planning system runs the risk of devaluing the undesignated assets that reflect these hidden stories of the poor, the dispossessed and the powerless.
