Quote: Innovative approaches to involving diverse community groups with schemes to help preserve or showcase Gloucester?s heritage have been recognised in a national competition.



Work with homeless people and a community project to chart and record the history of historic buildings before demolition as part of a regeneration scheme caught the eyes of the judges.



Now the Council for British Archaeology has awarded a ?highly commended? certificate to the city council?s heritage services team for the 2010 Marsh Archaeology Awards.



The awards recognise groups or individuals who have been responsible for promoting access to the historic environment in the UK.



Phil Staddon, the council?s director of regeneration, commented: ? One scheme involved a homeless charity and resulted in a display of the work that residents had produced. The other brought together a large group of people who put together a detailed history of a building in the centre of the city that was about to be demolished for a major regeneration project.



?In both cases it shows how communities can be engaged in the work of their local councils. I am delighted that the work of this team and all of the others who took part has been recognised at a national level.

Wax Wrote:However there are commercial companies out there trying to sell themselves as being able to take on HERs now how will that work ? Will they charge the councils and the public to access what should be a freely acessible(for research) resource? Who does all that lovely data belong to?:face-thinks:

moreno Wrote:This is something I was wondering about as well. Would it be a viable option for councils to sub this out? Will we see "new" (or commercial companies etc) businesses forming to take on this work?

Unitof1 Wrote:How are we going to do any archaeology if we don’t have a HER.

Does it mean that the developer would need to do more field work to check for archaeology.. You could do some background with your own books and what experience that you have of similar areas. There is some stuff on the internet. I think that if you are going to do the field work that is all you need. I don’t do any field work before I do some research. If I don’t find any information I just say I don’t have any or much information to go on and just put the trenches randomly and lucky guess. I think that I would tell my clients to do evaluations particularly before they bought the land from the landowners. I hear that in Suffolk that they are now doing mostly evaluations post determination and have stopped doing watching briefs. I think that this is the way to go particularly if there are no more HERs or SMRs.

The only problem is getting evaluation work pre determination. At least post determination you can mostly find out who needs an archaeologist through the decision notices. In some naughty counties and districts the planners are still keeping contractor lists. I don’t think that they are fair. Maybe if there are no planners they will not be able to put out “preferred” lists.