Untitled - Council for British Archaeology

THE OXFORDSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL UNIT 1979 -
Tom Hassell, Director
In spite of the gloomy outlooklor the British economy 1979
witnessed a small building boom in Oxfordshire and in particular
Oxford itself. Many construction projects Which had been discussed
for a long time began to actually take'shape. Accordingly the number
of rescue excavations either carried out by the Unit itself or in
cooperation with local societies and individuals has had to match the
work-load.
For the first half of the year the scale of operations was somewhat
less than in the previous year. The reason for this reduction
was that the Manpower Services Commission's Job Creation Programme
project came to an end in December 1978, nor was there a suitable
site for a major summer excavation using volunteers. However, the
MSC approved a new scheme under the Special Temporary Employment
Programme half-way through the year and since July up to 15 STEP
employees have been employed by the Unit. This labour force will
continue until July 1980. This further MSC grant has enabled the
high level of excavation activity of the Unit to continue while
allowing the Unit to liberate its resources to begin to catch up on
outstanding post-excavation projects. After July 1980 the work-load
is again bound to decline as costs continue to rise.
The financial position of the Unit since its first full year of
operations is summarised in Fig34. Fromthis diagram the financial
trends of the first five years show very clearly. Expenditure has
risen dramatically largely because of inflation which particularly
affects the salaries element of the Unit's budget. In addition the
growth of this element is compounded by the young age of all the staff
who are on incremental salary scales. The graph also shows the dramatic
effect of the various MSC schemes on the overall expenditure. Noteworthy
also is the virtually static size of the Department of the
Environment's (DoE) grant to Oxfordshire. In real terms there has
been a major annual cut-back which has only been partly offset by DoE
grants for projects outside Oxfordshire.
The Unit's projects currently fall into three distinct categories
so far as funding is concerned:
Major projects considered by the DoE to be of national importance
either in Oxfordshire or in surrounding counties (Warwickshire and
Gloucestershire in 1979). As mentioned above, during recent years the
DoE grant for Oxfordshire has declined dramatically in real terms.
The DoE grant alone is also insufficient to finance these projects in
their entirety.
Larger projects of county-wide significance using finance raised
from MSC and other local sources such as the Local Authorities and the
Amey Roadstone Corporation. Often the importance of these projects
has been subsequently recognised by DoE.
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