Snowballing...

Its been way too long since our last blog, due in no small part to an exceptionally busy spell, which has seen Armour Heritage venturing out to sites across the southwest, southeast and middle of England.

Over the last few months we’ve had a marked rise in commissions for Heritage Statements, with a variety of proposals from new builds within Conservation Areas, conversions of redundant Listed Buildings and demolition of Locally Listed Buildings to provide more sustainable 21st century living and working spaces. Although no two projects are the same, the bespoke assessments we provide our valued clients for each project in line with local planning policy and professional standards, allows an independent, NPPF compliant assessment of the proposal to be made, which consider both the positive outcomes and potential harm of any given proposal.

Needless to say, it’s not just been the desk based work which has kept us busy, and despite some challenging weather conditions we have also maintained a steady succession of fieldwork projects over the autumn/winter stint. Watching briefs, large open area excavation and historic building recording have all been completed as conditions of planning consents, and we have also been working on some predetermination fieldwork too, with trial trenching and geophysical surveys being undertaken to inform on the archaeological potential of specific projects.

All in all its been a remarkably busy and very positive start to 2018, and as we embark on our 6th trading year, we’re not snowed under, or snowed in, but things are happily snowballing…

Looking Back, Looking Forward...

2016 was AH’s fourth complete year of operations and represented our most successful both in terms of the number of projects completed and company turnover, for which we are very grateful to all our clients, both returning and new. Last year also saw AH accepted as a Registered Organisation with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, a significant step forward for us and a guarantee of our competence and our professional approach to a wide range of projects, from small alterations to Listed Buildings or undesignated buildings in Conservation Areas, to large scale excavations for housing and mixed-use developments. Geographically, as anyone who follows @Armourheritage on Twitter will know, we have completed projects from the far west of Cornwall to Kent and Sussex, and from Greater London to the Midlands and Yorkshire – if road miles translated to air miles we’d be due a free holiday in the sun!
Looking forward to 2017, although the immediate future is fuelled by a high level of uncertainty engendered by the referendum result, our clients remain very positive, and the beginning of the year is happily just as busy as the end of the last. Construction of new housing, development led work in schools, and energy projects across the south is resulting in a busy project worksheet, with a happy balance of desk based and fieldwork set to keep us busy at the start of the year!
Here’s wishing all our clients, sub-contractors and everyone else a happy and prosperous new year!

An upturn in housing development?

“Small builders will benefit from a £100 million cash boost to recognise and support their important role in keeping the country building”, Housing Minister Brandon Lewis said on 6th July this year.

The Housing Growth Partnership will act as a dedicated initiative that will invest alongside smaller builders in new developments, providing money to support their businesses, helping get workers onto sites and increasing housing supply.

At AH we’re hoping this projected boom in house building will correspond with an increase in heritage work, both pre-application and further down the planning and post-planning road. It may be that we are already seeing the beginnings of this with, last week, the news that Armour Heritage has won the first of a number of multi-site pre-planning contracts for a single developer which will keep us busy, initially with archaeological desk based assessments and heritage statements, for some considerable time! Unusually for us recently, these sites are all relatively local to our Somerset offices, all of the first batch are located in Wiltshire, so less need for arduous summer travel on holiday-clogged roads; the A303 at Stonehenge, the obvious exception of course!

Of course, from pre-planning work comes further fieldwork, be it pre-determination geophysical survey, earthwork survey or trial trenching, all of which are services provided by Armour Heritage.

Hopefully then, with an already very bright start to 2015, our success will continue in the year’s second two quarters.