Since April 1991, much of EH's statutory and advisory work has been integrated within the multi-disciplinary regional teams of Conservation Group. The range of archaeological work undertaken within these teams falls into 4 main areas:
Inspectors and Field Monument Wardens work closely with colleagues within EH and with a wide variety of external organisations and individuals. Complex scheduled monument cases may, for example, involve co-ordinating input from the Ancient Monuments Laboratory, architects, surveyors, and others. Inspectors work closely with the Monuments Protection Programme when scheduling proposals raise complex issues of management. Once a monument is scheduled, responsibility for casework and monitoring resides with the regional team.
Our advisory work involves frequent contact with local government archaeology officers, archaeological units, local planning authorities, national agencies (notably English Nature, the Countryside Commission, and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments for England), government departments, statutory undertakers, universities, and the voluntary sector. The range of these contacts marks a welcome trend towards the integrated protection and management of the historic environment.
A number of topics have been important in the archaeological work of the regional teams. The effects of the review of local government on local archaeological provision have been a cause for concern, notably in relation to the creation of new unitary authorities in the former counties of Avon and Humberside, and in south Hampshire (Southampton and Portsmouth), Leicester, and elsewhere. The maintenance of adequate professional staffing and the sites and monuments records on which they rely is seen as vital, and the case for this has been pressed strongly in the areas in question.
Inspectors in the regional teams have had a full input to a variety of archaeological policy initiatives which began to come to fruition this year. These included the England's Coastal Heritage project concerned with maritime and littoral archaeology, Planning for the Past (a review of archaeological assessment procedures), and the Battlefields Register which was published in final form, following consultation, in 1995. Historic battlefield sites arouse wide public interest, and this is a significant new area of work for Inspectors in the regional teams. Work on the intensive and extensive urban archaeological programmes has also gathered pace and these initiatives are proving very popular. Progress has continued on management plans for the World Heritage Sites of Avebury and Hadrian's Wall, and on liaison with the Ministry of Defence over the impact of increased activity on important archaeological remains on the Salisbury Plain and Otterburn military training areas. Liaison with the Highways Agency has also been important, although the scaling down of the roads programme has been noticeable. An important focus of interest during the year has been the archaeology of buildings, following the publication of Planning Policy Guidance Note 15 (PPG-15) Planning and the Historic Environment which introduces broadly similar provisions for the assessment and recording of historic buildings to those which PPG-16 contains for archaeological remains.
