Answer
How Long Does Archaeological Work Delay a Development?
Handled early, archaeology need not delay a development at all. Handled late, it delays it at the most expensive possible moment.
The honest answer
The durations that matter are the approval of a written scheme, which is not instant and should be assumed to take weeks rather than days; the fieldwork itself, which depends entirely on the site; and the reporting and archive stage, which frequently sits behind a condition preventing occupation.
Delay is almost always caused by sequence rather than by archaeology. A pre-commencement condition discovered a month before mobilisation produces delay. The same condition addressed when consent is granted usually does not.
On phased schemes, the practical target is not to finish all archaeology but to stay a phase ahead of the construction programme, permanently.
Questions
Common questions on this
We mobilise in six weeks and have not started. What now?
Send us the condition and the site information today. The realistic aim is a scheme submitted for approval immediately and fieldwork sequenced around your earliest works, and we will tell you honestly whether the date survives.
Project review
Ask it about your own site
Send the planning position, site area and depth of disturbance, and we will answer against your scheme rather than in general terms.