Insights
Archaeology, planning and the development programme
Written for the people who actually carry archaeological risk: land and development directors, planning and environmental consultants, and contractors programming enabling works.
Guidance
Start here
Start with the Cambridge planning system, then move into the fieldwork, cost and programme decision your project has reached.
Acquisition and budget
Cost
Archaeological survey costs for planning permission
Build an allowance around the method, approval stage and reporting obligation, not an unsupported hectare rate.
Read →Cost
How to reduce archaeological mitigation costs
Where the real savings are — and the false economies that cost more later.
Read →Land
Assessing archaeological risk before land acquisition
What to check before committing to a Cambridgeshire greenfield site.
Read →Cost
Post-excavation and archive: the cost developers forget
Why the bill and the programme continue after the plant leaves site.
Read →Cost
Who pays for archaeology on a development site?
How cost is allocated between landowner, promoter and contractor.
Read →Planning and approvals
Cambridgeshire planning
Cambridgeshire HER and archaeological design briefs
How the county evidence base, site brief and contractor WSI fit together.
Read →Major development
Development archaeology in North East Cambridge
Brownfield constraints, evidence and programme decisions for the major growth area.
Read →Planning
Discharging archaeological planning conditions in Cambridgeshire
The sequence from condition wording to sign-off, and where programmes usually slip.
Read →Planning
What a Written Scheme of Investigation actually is
Why the WSI is the document that controls cost, method and approval timing.
Read →Planning
What a desk-based assessment covers
The cheapest archaeological document, and the limits of what it can conclude.
Read →Evaluation and mitigation
Evaluation
What happens if trial trenching finds archaeology
The decisions that follow a positive evaluation, and how to keep options open.
Read →Mitigation
Archaeological watching brief: what it is and when it is enough
The lightest mitigation option, and the sites where it becomes a trap.
Read →Mitigation
Strip, map and sample explained
The mitigation method that often costs less than full excavation.
Read →Evaluation
Geophysical survey in Cambridgeshire
Where magnetometry works, where fen and made ground defeat it.
Read →Tender, programme and site delivery
Field note
What an archaeological supervisor checks before a site opens
Adrian Wellard’s field-led checklist from the approved WSI to survey control, plant, services, records and communication.
Read →Procurement
Procuring archaeological services in Cambridgeshire
How to issue a comparable fieldwork tender and expose programme and cost assumptions.
Read →Programme
Archaeology and the construction programme
How much time archaeology genuinely takes, stage by stage.
Read →Reference
Need the terminology first?
Use the plain-English glossary to translate the language in a condition, brief, tender or archaeological report.
Project review
Have a specific question about your site?
General guidance only goes so far. Send us the site and the planning position and we will answer against your actual circumstances.