Planning Services
Southeast Wales is currently an area of major expansion and redevelopment. The threat to the archaeological resource from development has been recognised by the Government and is a material consideration in the planning process. The Trust is the archaeological advisor to the twelve local planning authorities (and part of the Brecon Beacons National Park) in the region. It has assisted them in the formulation of policies in their strategic development plans, which seek to protect the archaeological resource and is currently assisting in the development of their Local Development Plans. In this role the Archaeological Planning Section annually inspects some 20,000 planning applications to ensure that these policies are correctly implemented.
In certain cases, the applicant may need to commission an archaeological contractor to evaluate the site's archaeological potential and a list of archaeological contractors who are available for work can be found on the IFA website. The Section provides briefs for the work, checks specifications, monitors the fieldwork and approves the resulting reports on behalf of the LPA. Archaeological work carried out after determination of planning applications is also subject to approval by the Archaeological Planning Section. All of the Section's work is carried out in accordance with the Welsh Archaeological Trusts' Curators' Code of Conduct.
The section is concerned to bring archaeological work into the public domain either by the deposition of contractor's reports into the Historic Environment Record, or by the publication of a full report.