A NEW law governing the way the Island deals with archaeological finds is “the most important thing in heritage management in Jersey for 25 years”, according to a key player involved in the legislation.
Jersey Heritage chief executive Jon Carter said it had been more than two decades since the passing of a statute of comparable significance to the Island’s new Heritage Law, which was published in draft form in late July and is expected to come into force next year.
Speaking to the JEP about the move, Mr Carter said: “I think it’s the most important thing in heritage management in Jersey in the last 25 years, since the Public Records Law which really established the basis of the Jersey Archive service.”
The Public Records (Jersey) Law was passed by the States Assembly in 2002 to ensure all public records produced in the Island’s administrations would be scheduled and correctly disposed of.
Mr Carter, who took up his current role in 2003, said the shortcomings of the current system for handling discoveries of buried treasure and other archaeological finds had been brought into focus during a ten-year wrangle over how a hoard of 70,000 Celtic coins should be dealt with.
“Certainly after that the government understood the need for a modern statute,” he said.
The long-serving chief executive also highlighted priorities for Jersey Heritage in the years ahead, which he said included a greater focus on sites that were a legacy of the German Occupation of Jersey during the Second World War, the moves to gain official “Geopark” status for Jersey from the United Nations, and work to restore historic buildings at Elizabeth Castle.
- You can read a fuller interview with Mr Carter in tomorrow’s JEP.
