Martin Locock Wrote:For the past ten years the Institute has been working with curators and colleagues in ALGAO to encourage them to move away from recommending local lists, and instead to recommend that work arising from the planning process is undertaken by Registered Organisations.

RedEarth Wrote:It's not a particularly good comparison though. At present the situation is more like looking for a cab to get you to, say round Perth, and calling a cab company in Cardiff or London. You simply wouldn't do it because it would obviously not make financial sense in most cases, and you certainly wouldn't sift a great long list of 'registered' cab drivers till you found one that sounded like a good option. You'd go to a local directory. Why can't the IfA's site have an option to search for where ROs are based rather than where they are willing to work (or does it already have this?)

Quote:For the past ten years the Institute has been working with curators and colleagues in ALGAO to encourage them to move away from recommending local lists, and instead to recommend that work arising from the planning process is undertaken by Registered Organisations. Last year we published a legal opinion on the requirement to use Registered Organisations by LPA curators which we hope allays some fears about legal challenge. There is obviously more work to be done, but we are hopeful that an increasing amount of work undertaken in the historic environment sector will be done so by organisations working within the Registered Organisation Scheme for the benefit of the profession, and, more importantly, the archaeology and the public who ultimately benefit from its understanding.

Dinosaur Wrote:Hence my comment on here a while back about the recent (aand in some cases not so recent) outbreak of companies apparently having loads of 'regional offices' many of which, going by the addresses, look suspiciously like private domiciles - how many of these are merely 'addresses of convenience' so that the unit can look 'local', and how can even larger units cover the overheads of running a dozen 'regional offices'? There are several around here, but it's not been noticeable that the units in question actually get any significant workload through them, leastways they don't seem to have cut into our business noticeably :face-thinks:

RedEarth Wrote:I must have missed that but it is a good point. Always seemed pretty underhand using private addresses and PO boxes to appear local but it does seem pretty widespread. Wonder how many ROs indulge in such behaviour?

Quote:If being local was such a commercial advantage, we wouldn't have super units surely?

BAJR Wrote:Should membership be compulsory or you will be put out of work? - Now that's the question

kevin wooldridge Wrote:I think this is surely making a mountain out of a molehill....the use of the term 'underhand' suggests that such practice is illegal (it isn't) or makes bad business sense (it doesn't). I am totally in favour of locally based archaeological services, but all of us who have been around for 20 years or more have been through that struggle. We lost decisively to the combination of market forces and a lack of support from national bodies and local curators. We have to accept I think that archeeology in the UK is pretty much a nationally based business. Good luck to those organisations that maintain a local or regional identity, but for lots of archaeologists who can't find work locally the nationally based organisations are a godsend.