Worrying article in NCMD "Digging Deeper" magazine . . .

[Neil]

Theres a worrying article in Issue 5 of the latest NCMD publication. Its regarding the future of the Portable Antiquity Scheme (PAS) and regards the BM taking over responsibility  for the governance and management of PAS with effect from 1st April 2012 (Any coincidence its April Fools Day?)

Basically the funding is being cut by 15% from £1.45m to £1.3m. They have come up with a few ways to introduce these savings, such as ceasing to print their Annual report, freezing contracts etc. The main area of concern for Welsh Detectorists though is the following:

* To reduce the current contribution made by the Scheme to PAS in Wales, the total cost of which is £75k pa, from £59k this year to £6k from 2012. this is on the basis that these costs should be borne by the Welsh assembly Government through CyMAL or The National Museum of Wales.

Now call me sceptical, but in the current climate I would be suprised if WAG would back this and fund the PAS scheme in Wales. All public sector bodies are currently facing huge cuts, with HEFCW alone having to reduce University spending by 15% in 3 years, and unemployment at the highest in Wales for a number of years.

Its going to be interesting. Any opinions out there?

cheers
Neil

[Chef Geoff]

Interesting, but only to be expected I guess. Archaeology and the arts are always hit when there is a recession because lets face it there are far more important things that need the money.
Where does the bulk of the funding come from at present? as £75K is pretty small change in the great scheme of things.

[rjm]

The system is in a bit of a mess now, so with less money I can only see things getting worse.

As the end user I anticipate that we will see treasure finds taking EVEN longer to go through
the system...........and we know how bad it is at the moment.

The fact that the Courts sytem is also being affected with courts being closed down all over the
UK means, with the PAS system cuts, we can say goodbye to our Treasure for 3 to 4 years...
and find ourselves chasing through the system trying to locate it and find out what's happening
and getting it returned.

It doesnt look good........