ALSF Dissemination: Benchmark Report Theme 4B. Management of extraction - Sustainable Heritage

The Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) was introduced in 2002, initially as a two-year pilot scheme, to provide funds to relieve the environmental impacts of aggregate extraction; past, present and future. The ALSF is distributed on behalf of DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) by, amongst other bodies, English Heritage, who allocate funds against ALSF Objective 2 (Promoting environmentally-friendly extraction and transport) and Objective 3 (Addressing the environmental impacts of past extraction). In 2007 DEFRA commissioned the ALSF Dissemination Project, to bring together and disseminate the results of all research funded by the ALSF during the six years between 2002 and 2007. This project, Sustainable Heritage - Aggregates Extraction and Management of the Historic Environment, is one of three linked projects covering the Heritage theme. The project reviews the impact that ALSF projects aimed at developing new guidance, standards and best practice have had on the aggregates industry, archaeological curators and practitioners. The report provides a critique and summary of the suite of guidance to industry undertaken through the ALSF, placing such guidance in the context of wider research into the historic environment.