Permits

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Discussing recent media interest in excavations with a pal who works for Scottish Heritage, he let slip his colleagues in English Heritage are putting pressure on the MoD to impose further restrictions on excavations by designating crash sites as being of historical value. Apparently, there have already been meetings between the Air Historical Branch and EH on this topic. Cannot confirm this, but sounds plausible.

Interesting! I had got the impression that EH had lost interest in Crash sites as there was no funding to do anything about recording them properly? BAAC members have been filling in site reports for them for a while to help build a database – well we should have been and I know mine are overdue before anyone reminds me! 😉 So this would be a bit of biting the hand that feeds them :confused: – Face it the MOD rarely know where the sites are until we tell them! so EH won’t be getting much out of them.

As for the refusal case that I mentioned, I have now had a chat with Innsworth & basically with it being a post war crash there is much more documentation available to them, including detailed report on what was (and sadly not) recovered of the unfortunate pilot and their decision was based on this. They did not have details as to the nature of the crash or the type of terrain, so this was not taken into account – they could have asked me though 🙁

I have been now asked to provide written details of our research and survey of the site and they will take this into account and reconsider – which I have done and await their decision. I would like to point out though that if I thought for a moment that there was any realistic possibility of finding any significant remains of the pilot on the site I would not be taking this course of action & would have accepted their decision.

I will report in due course as to the result – don’t hold your breath though, it seems that the dept dealing with permits is severly understaffed and no doubt others will be experiencing delays as well – I have still heard nothing about the other two permits I have applied for, at the beggining of the year, other than confirmation they have been received and are being dealt with.