Yes it is a real pain to remove an old spit or equivalent, and does take longer, but really on the scale of time for use and conservation of the cave, should we not be trying to replace as much as possible.Slightly more concerning is if people are not reusing resin anchor holes, which I ave heard rumours (but no evidence)
I was told that 20 -30 Peco anchors which were decommissioned in Rowten Pot Gully have been hammered flat and smeared with resin and mud as the favoured option. I believe that the route has now been rebolted with the new BP bolt as well, although I have not seen this myself.More here http://www.cncc.org.uk/documents/PECOAnchorDecommissioning.pdf
Achieving the kind of pull forces required to simply extract an anchor with anything less beefy than the puller used for the test programme will not be easy.