Discharging Archaeological Planning Conditions in Cambridgeshire

Read the condition before pricing anything

Almost every archaeological condition has two limbs. The first prevents development until a written scheme of investigation has been submitted to and approved by the local planning authority. The second requires the development to be carried out in accordance with that approved scheme, including the post-excavation reporting and archive deposition it specifies.

Both limbs must be satisfied. Completing fieldwork does not discharge the condition on its own, and this is the single most common misunderstanding we encounter — usually on sites where the fieldwork was done years earlier by someone else and the reporting was never finished.

• Is the condition pre-commencement, or tied to a phase or a specific trigger such as groundworks?
• Does it require evaluation, mitigation, or a single scheme covering both?
• Does it name a published standard, an authority brief, or simply the authority's approval as the test?
• Does it expressly include analysis, publication and archive deposition?

The realistic sequence

In Cambridgeshire, as elsewhere, the sequence runs: informal scope discussion with the authority's archaeological advisor; preparation and submission of the written scheme of investigation; approval; fieldwork in accordance with the approved scheme; post-excavation assessment and reporting; archive deposition; and finally written confirmation that the condition has been satisfied.

Each step has a duration. The approval step depends on the advisor's workload and on whether the scope was agreed before submission. Fieldwork depends on scale, ground conditions and plant availability. Reporting depends on how much archaeology was found — which is precisely the thing nobody can fix in advance.

Where programmes actually lose time

Time is rarely lost in the field. It is lost in the gaps: waiting to appoint a contractor, waiting for a written scheme to be approved after a scope disagreement, discovering that the condition includes analysis and archive obligations that were never priced, or finding that the intended fieldwork window falls in a period when machines and staff are already committed elsewhere.

• Appointing an archaeological contractor only once the condition becomes urgent
• Submitting a written scheme without agreeing its scope with the advisor first
• Treating the evaluation report as the end of the obligation
• Assuming archaeology can be squeezed into any two-week gap in the enabling works
• Leaving archive deposition unresolved, which can hold discharge open long after the site is built

What to do first if you are holding a condition now

Get the wording read properly against what the development will actually disturb. On several sites we have reviewed, the requirement was materially lighter than the client assumed, or earlier archaeological work already satisfied part of it. On others it was heavier, and knowing that six months before the start on site was worth considerably more than finding out six weeks before.

Whichever it turns out to be, the position is knowable now, cheaply, from the decision notice and the planning history.