The Highways Agency, as a branch of Government, has large and self-acknowledged responsibilities towards the historic environment. Yet two problems are emerging which could undermine the success with which these responsibilities are exercised. They arise from the recent shift to private initiative in roadbuilding, through a policy known as `Design, Build, Finance and Operate' (DBFO).
The first problem is one of managing risk. DBFO contractors, the new privatised roadbuilders who are taking over Highways Agency schemes, are paid by Government to shoulder all risks in doing so. DBFO consortia will in turn download as many risks as possible to their subcontractors.
Archaeological risks - such as the unexpected discovery of sites that require huge amounts of money to record properly - are more risky than most, simply because what might be found is necessarily unknowable. Good evaluation in advance of schemes will minimise, but will not always entirely remove, such risks. The question arises whether even large archaeological contracting units (which by industrial standards are vanishingly small) will be able to accept them. Many are educational charities, which arguably are unable to expose themselves to any commercial risk at all.
This is now a practical problem, but it may become one of principle. We might legitimately ask why an archaeological body - established for the advancement of knowledge - should have that aim redefined, as a result of others' decisions on the funding structure of the road industry. The splitting up of large roadbuilding projects between archaeological contractors, to ensure that liabilities are spread, also militates against the intellectual coherence which certain schemes deserve.
The second problem is one of quality control. It appears that the Highways Agency expects the DBFO contractors to perform the `curatorial' role - that is, to safeguard, in the public interest, the quality of archaeological work (which cannot be done again if it fails). I say `appears' because it is not obvious that the Highways Agency itself is clear who should be looking after the wider archaeological issues that inevitably arise during a roadbuilding scheme.
It is surely disingenuous to claim that DBFO contractors will do any more than the minimum, while effort which should be going into the effective practice of archaeology will be diverted into working out what the minimum is. English Heritage, as the Government's statutory advisors on archaeology, and the county archaeologist (or archaeologists, if the road crosses a county boundary) are also involved - but the multiplication of layers of advice makes communication more laborious, and draws attention to the issue of who, in these increasingly fragmented arrangements, is ultimately responsible for oversight.
All of which brings us to the nub of the matter, which is value for money. `If the bureaucracy insists on continuing to confuse value for money with cheapness,' someone wisely commented recently, `ministers and officials should have the opportunity to explain their reasons publicly, rather than hide behind contractors. ' Who was it who said these words? It was not an archaeologist, but Sir John Banham, a former Director General of the CBI and today Chairman of Tarmac, which built the M3 extension through Twyford Down.
Sir John is spot on, and he may like to know that the Highways Agency did have an opportunity to explain what it means by `value for money' at a recent colloquium on archaeology and roadbuilding. The official from the Agency's Environmental Policy Directorate seemed nonplussed when the question was put. Cost and time featured in her answer; the need to ensure academically well-judged collection, assimilation and publication of new knowledge - which are archaeology's `outputs' - did not.
The Highways Agency is now the UK's largest single funder of new archaeological excavations, and the schemes which occasion them would, if sensibly commissioned, provide opportunities for work of the highest value. But this will only happen if the Highways Agency begins to relate its interpretation of `value' to what archaeology is actually supposed to do.
Richard Morris is the Director of the CBA
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© Council for British Archaeology, 1996