Human remains on site: the licence and the procedure

Human remains found during development stop the machine and start a legal process. Removal of buried human remains needs a licence from the Ministry of Justice under section 25 of the Burial Act 1857, unless the remains lie in consecrated ground and are being moved under a faculty, in which case the church courts deal with it instead. Before either route opens, the coroner has to be satisfied there is nothing modern or criminal about the find.

What matters commercially is that none of this is negotiable and all of it is programmable. A site with a known burial ground can be budgeted. A site where the burials appear on a Tuesday afternoon with no archaeologist appointed cannot.

Why remains turn up outside known burial grounds

Consecrated churchyards are mapped. The burials that surprise developers are the ones that are not.

Nonconformist chapel grounds closed in the nineteenth century and built over, workhouse and hospital burial grounds, prison grounds, Quaker and Jewish burial grounds, early parish grounds whose boundaries were larger than the current wall, plague and epidemic burials outside settlements, and prehistoric, Roman and Anglo-Saxon cemeteries with no surface trace at all. Urban sites also produce charnel: disarticulated bone redeposited when a Victorian basement or sewer cut through an earlier ground.

All of that is findable before you buy. An Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment interrogating the Historic Environment Record, historic mapping, tithe and enclosure records and previous investigations nearby is the cheapest piece of risk management available on a brownfield site, and it is the document that tells you whether to expect burials at all.

Stopping work and who to tell first

The moment articulated bone is exposed, do these things in this order:

1. Stop groundworks in the immediate area. Not the whole site, but far enough that machinery is not working over the deposit.
2. Cover and secure the find. Screen it from public view and from photography, and control site access to it.
3. Leave the remains in place. Do not lift, clean, bag or move anything.
4. Tell the police. They decide whether the find is a potential crime scene and they notify the coroner.
5. Tell your archaeological contractor and the local authority archaeological adviser or county archaeologist.
6. Tell the case officer if a condition on the permission covers archaeology, because the written scheme of investigation will need varying.

Record who you told and when. That log is what demonstrates you complied if anyone asks later, and it is short work at the time and impossible to reconstruct afterwards.

The coroner, the police and the release of remains

The coroner's jurisdiction under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 attaches to a body found in their area where the death may have been violent or unnatural, where the cause is unknown, or in other statutory circumstances. Archaeological remains rarely fall within it, but the coroner rather than the developer makes that call.

In practice a police officer attends, forms a view with the archaeologist, and the coroner releases the remains for archaeological treatment. That can happen the same day on an obviously ancient burial with a clear stratigraphic context. It takes longer where the remains are shallow, recent-looking, or where the context is ambiguous.

One threshold worth knowing. The Human Tissue Act 2004 applies to remains of people who died less than 100 years ago, which brings storage and use of the material into a separate licensing regime administered by the Human Tissue Authority. On a nineteenth or early twentieth century burial ground, that date line can fall inside your site.

The licence to remove remains

Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857 makes it an offence to remove buried human remains without the authority of a licence, and the Ministry of Justice issues those licences on application. The application identifies the site, the number and character of the remains expected, who will carry out the work, and what will happen to the remains afterwards.

Licence conditions follow a pattern. The removal must be carried out with due care and attention to decency. The ground must be screened from public view while the work goes on. The remains must be reinterred in a burial ground or cremated, or retained for a stated period for scientific examination, and a condition normally names the eventual destination. Where the number of burials is uncertain, the licence can be framed to cover the area rather than a fixed count.

Where the site is a disused burial ground being redeveloped, the Disused Burial Grounds legislation adds its own requirements, including published notices and a process allowing relatives and personal representatives to be heard. That is a statutory timetable rather than an administrative one, so it goes on the programme as a fixed duration.

Apply early. A licence applied for when the first burial appears sits behind a queue. A licence applied for on the strength of an evaluation, before the main groundworks, does not.

Consecrated ground and the faculty route

Land consecrated according to the rites of the Church of England is outside the section 25 route for most purposes. Removal there is authorised by a faculty from the diocesan chancellor, and the faculty jurisdiction applies whether or not a church still stands on the site.

Two complications arise regularly. First, the extent of consecration is often unclear, because consecration attaches to ground rather than to a boundary drawn on a modern plan. Establishing it may need diocesan records. Second, part of a site can be consecrated and part not, which means two consent routes on one excavation and two sets of conditions on the same archaeological team.

Where a burial ground is also within the curtilage of a listed church, or is itself a scheduled monument, add those consents to the list. A Heritage Statement addressing the significance of the burial ground as part of the asset, rather than treating the burials as a construction issue, is what makes the case coherent to a conservation officer.

Osteological analysis and the standards that apply

Excavation of burials is hand work by archaeologists with human osteology experience, recorded to the standards and guidance published by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. Historic England has published guidance, prepared with the Church of England, on the treatment of remains excavated from Christian burial grounds, and that document is the reference conservation officers and diocesan advisers will expect you to have followed.

The analysis itself answers questions that justify the cost: age at death, sex where determinable, stature, pathology, evidence of diet and occupation, trauma, and burial practice including coffin fittings, shroud pins and orientation. On a large assemblage that becomes a research contribution, and on a small one it still forms part of the site archive.

Specify the analysis in the written scheme of investigation rather than leaving it as a variation. The commonest cost overrun on burial sites is not the excavation, it is an open-ended post-excavation programme agreed after the fact.

Reburial, retention and deposition

Three destinations exist and the licence decides which applies.

Reinterment in a burial ground, which needs a receiving ground willing to take the remains and a burial authority prepared to record it. Cremation, which is used for large assemblages of disarticulated material. Or retention for study, for a period the licence states, after which reinterment or an extension is required.

Museums are increasingly reluctant to accept human remains without a clear research case and a curation plan, so agree the destination before the excavation rather than after. Where reburial is the answer, the practical arrangement is often a dedicated plot in a local cemetery with a simple marker, secured by agreement, and its cost belongs in the archaeology budget rather than appearing as a surprise.

Keep the deposition agreement with the site archive. It is the document a future owner or researcher will need.

Programme and cost

Burial archaeology is slow because it is hand excavation with recording at individual level, and the duration scales with the number of burials rather than with the area. Screening, welfare, and the need for a controlled and respectful working environment all reduce productivity. Vaults add further problems: lead coffins, collapse risk, confined space entry and the health precautions that go with disturbing nineteenth century interments.

Manage the risk in this order. Desk-based assessment before purchase. Evaluation trenching before determination where the assessment flags burial potential, because whether evaluation happens before or after determination changes who carries the risk. A written scheme of investigation approved as part of the permission. Licence applications submitted on the strength of the evaluation results. And a contract that allocates the cost of additional burials explicitly rather than leaving it to an argument.

An Archaeological Field Evaluation is a document councils expect from a suitably qualified archaeologist, and professional review before submission is strongly advised. The value of doing it early is that the licence, the reburial arrangement and the specialist appointment can all be in place before the main contractor arrives, which turns an open-ended risk into a line item.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which archaeology and heritage documents your site is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority, the Ministry of Justice or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required.