South Yorkshire Archaeology Service cuts

[P Prentice]

Is this a not what it says it is list

http://www.sheffield.gov.uk/planning-and...contractor

so why have it.

arnt this mob involved as well

http://www.archaeology.wyjs.org.uk/

whats your point?

[Marcus Brody]

Becausewhen the application goes into a period of public consultation. Othercommercial archaeologists (more reputable), have the opportunity to object tothe proposed mitigation as does the public on “archaeological” grounds.…we don’tneeds smrs for commercial work.

Oh Unitof1,don't you ever get bored of making basically the same series of tired responses on every single thread, regardless of what the subject actually is? I can't decide whether you're a) deliberately adopting extreme positions to provoke a response, or b) naive and unaware of the real world to such an extent that you shouldn't be allowed out on your own for the safety of yourself and others.

In this case, I would charitably hope it's b), and you're just being naive in your assertion that there's no need for council archaeologists because the public or other commercial contractors will scrutinise reports submitted in support of planning applications. If you really believe that, all I can say is that I've got some magic beans you might like to purchase, for the knock-down price of just ?50k!

All material relating to planning applications is already in the public domain and usually available for consultation either online or at the planning department, but how often does either commercial contractors or local societies monitor these? I can't see other professional contractors undertaking the sort of systemic monitoring of other people's reports you envisage unless they're being paid to do so (too much of an investment of time and personnel, with no financial benefit to them), while I don't imagine volunteers would find it sufficiently interesting. While there's never a shortage of volunteers wanting to dig, it's always a problem finding people to invest the time to write up the results, and you'd need people willing to do this sort of checking week-in, week-out, for absolutely nothing. You might get people doing it at the start, but they'd quickly drift away after experiencing the mind-numbing tedium of being faced with a never-ending stream of negative reports, leaving a situation where the unscrupulous contractor would be able to submit any old nonsense in the expectation that statistically it's very unlikely that anyone with the experience to say that it's not adequate will ever look at it.

You're also very selective in your use of the PPS, only quoting those sections that (in isolation) appears to support your views, without noting those that don't. Policy HE.2, Evidence Base for Plan Making, is quite clear that 'Regional and local planning authorities should ensure that they have evidence about the historic environment and heritage assets in their area and that this is publicly documented... Local planning authorities should either maintain or have access to a historic environment record...Local planning authorities should use the evidence to assess the type, numbers, distribution, significance and condition of heritage assets and the contribution that they may make to their environment now and in the future. It should also be used to help predict the likelihood that currently unidentified heritage assets, particularly sites of historic and archaeological interest, will be discovered in the future'.

Even policy HE.6, information requirements for applications for consent affecting heritage assets, from which you draw many of your quotes, states that 'as a minimum the relevant historic environment record should have been consulted', while the additional note to Policy HE9.6 states that 'advice and information about the significance of known, but non-designated heritage assets with archaeological interest may be obtained from County Archaeologists and historic environment records, respectively'. Far from setting out a vision for how commercial archaeology would function in the absence of HERs, as your selective quotes would suggest, the need for some form of HER is mentioned repeatedly in the PPS, suggesting that the authors would not agree with your statement that we don't need SMRs for commercial work.

[Unitof1]

I don’t approve of lists-you might…particularly ones that try to tell you what they are not. Are they worried about some illegality? Some past council practise that was found to be very restrictive?

Possibly I also support the cowboy archaeologist or also those newly “qualified” by the dubious education system in this country to attempt to set up and compete against the next so called archaeologist. I don’t think that any curator should in any way have any baring on the selection or approval of an archaeologist or what standard lacking detail that they might want to trade under even if it might be pompous twit.

Mr brody I applaud the motive behind your in depth defence of a system which is presumably alien law in your neck of the highland woods. Presumably your clear sightedness is based on their clearances.

Most pre planning application archaeological information is mostly not in the public domain and nor should it be. It should come into the public domain when the application is made, that is when I the public would like to see it. I the public should like to consider the information, comment on it and my comments be relayed to the people who approve or not planning applications under TCPA. PPS offered this system unfortunately those that have pensions to consider are still using the planning consultation period to undertake non-transparent negotiations within the applicant system/fog to arrive at decision notice scheme of work conditions which are almost always the first time when my clients discover that they have/need the great fortune to employ an archaeologist like myself.

[SIZE=3]I can't see other professional contractors undertaking the sort of systemic monitoring of other people's reports
[/SIZE]

This is not relevant to the pre-application situation- presumably some fig leaf for your ignorance of what happens south of your virtual boarder. I never read other peoples reports unless they are germane and easily available for an area in which I have a client. I don’t ever intend to monitor reports. I use them for information that might be relevant. If they are written as if by a buffoon then I treat the information as being from a buffoon. Whatever the information as a field archaeologist I guarantee nobody else’s information bar mine own which results from my own physical examination of the site. I guarantee it for the ends of the client.

In as much that I hold the physical examination of the site to be the singular of archaeological significance, the inexpensive evaluation I hold over any other type of report held by whoever in what ever binding. I have no use of what might not be or is in someone’s add hock collection of so called archaeological information. As an aside the information in somebody’s HER is not and cannot be consistent between sites. I should suggest that this is unfair on my clients who should not be made to suffer the consequences.

Why the PPS’s are littered with mostly footnotes to a figment of no ones statutory imagination I imagine is something that a more secularly pensioned HER people who wrote PPS might like to explain.

[SIZE=3]Far from setting out a vision for how commercial archaeology would function in the absence of HERs, as your selective quotes would suggest, the need for some form of HER is mentioned repeatedly in the PPS, suggesting that the authors would not agree with your statement that [SIZE=6]we don't need SMRs for commercial work.[/SIZE]

[/SIZE]

By [SIZE=6]we you don’t mean commercial field archaeologists do you? I being field evaluation based do not need HERs as much as you have pointed out in your rambblings it is those indispensibles, the algao people, pretending to be the “regional and local planning authorities" who desperatly make out that they do:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Policy HE.2, is quite clear that 'Regional and local planning authorities should ensure that they have evidence about the historic environment and heritage assets in their area and that this is publicly documented...

Local planning authorities should either maintain or have access to a historic environment record...

Local planning authorities should use the evidence to assess the type, numbers, distribution, significance and condition of heritage assets and the contribution that they may make to their environment now and in the future. It should also be used to help predict the likelihood that currently unidentified heritage assets, particularly sites of historic and archaeological interest, will be discovered in the future'.
[/SIZE]

without an inexpensive field evaluation that last sentance really is a load of rubbish isnit algao

That these SMRs should not be funded and will not exit outside the index of a museum collection is the world in which I imagine that we are going to exist in the future. How does that world work for me. Brody you got your finger in the dyke whats going to happen when the dyke crumbles around it?

[Relictor]

Sorry people are losing their jobs, sorry that they thought that they could rely on commercial archaeology or that commercial archaeology can function without them

so long as the planners implement the New Planning Policy Statements and make it a requirement that there is archaeological consideration given with all the planning applications I don think that closing down south Yorkshires archaeological service will have any impact on the undertaking of commercial archaeology in that region.

Yes but its not just those people losing their jobs ....

As I was told today by one "over worked" county arch they will no longer be setting conditions on smaller jobs, such a extensions, swimming pools, garages etc as they just haven't got the time ...... now the cynic may suggest the time management ability :face-stir: .... however THIS directly affect all archaeologist tendering for jobs, because there is now fewer of them. Also a lack of smaller jobs will hit the small companies and one man bands the hardest.

[BAJR]

Emails sent. disapproval and support provided

Lets see.

[P Prentice]

[quote=Unitof1]
Most pre planning application archaeological information is mostly not in the public domain and nor should it be.
I never read other peoples reports unless they are germane and easily available

In as much that I hold the physical examination of the site to be the singular of archaeological significance,
I have no use of what might not be or is in someone?s add hock collection of so called archaeological information. As an aside the information in somebody?s HER is not and cannot be consistent between sites.

That these SMRs should not be funded and will not exit outside the index of a museum collection is the world in which I imagine that we are going to exist in the future.]

[Marcus Brody]

In responding to Unitof1, I've chosen to ignore all his 'hilarious' anti-Scottish references - after all, not everyone can be lucky enough to live in God's Own Country (with apologies to people from Yorkshire, who I know use the same term to describe their own patch!)

Most pre planning application archaeological information is mostly not in the public domain and nor should it be. It should come into the public domain when the application is made, that is when I the public would like to see it. I the public should like to consider the information, comment on it and my comments be relayed to the people who approve or not planning applications under TCPA.

That's what I meant, I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear. The work is done pre-application, the report is submitted in support of the application, the report is available as part of the planning application. The point I was making is that planning applications are already open to public scrutiny, and frequently contain reports on various aspects, sometimes including archaeology, but these are very rarely consulted by either professional archaeologists or the public in general, except in the situation where someone objects to a neighbour's extension or something. It's therefore naive to suggest that pre-application archaeological information would be checked any more rigorously by this mythical army of other professional contractors or members of the public you seem to believe is out there. In practise, most reports would slip through the system entirely unchecked.

I never read other peoples reports unless they are germane and easily available for an area in which I have a client.

Nothing like going into the field fully-prepared, is there?

I don’t ever intend to monitor reports.

But you said previously in the thread that 'Other commercial archaeologists (more reputable), have the opportunity to object to the proposed mitigation as does the public on “archaeological” grounds'. How will they do this if they don't actually check them - or are you suggesting that only a tiny proportion of the hundreds of thousands of reports will ever actually be looked at by another archaeologist. Seems like a system guaranteed to encourage developers to submit any old nonsense, on the basis that it's statistically unlikely that any other commercial archaeologist or member of the public will actually look at it.

as you have pointed out in your rambblings

Pot? Kettle? I'll hold my hands up to rambling, but only if you do too!

[Unitof1]

[SIZE=3]As I was told today by one "over worked" county arch they will no longer be setting conditions on smaller jobs, such a extensions, swimming pools, garages etc as they just haven't got the time ...... now the cynic may suggest the time management ability .... however THIS directly affect all archaeologist tendering for jobs, because there is now fewer of them. Also a lack of smaller jobs will hit the small companies and one man bands the hardest.
[/SIZE]

That’s the point [SIZE=4]Relictor. They are not doing it anyway and are likely to do it less. We need the other way mentioned in PPS. What we need as a start is a section on the standard planning application forms, which are handed out by most local authorities, which with refer to archaeological conservation. A lot of the application forms already have a section for Biodiversity and Geological Conservation, trees and hedges, flood prevention, and for which if it isn’t obvious the applicant will seek the advice of relevant authorities on those subjects before putting in the application.[/SIZE]
Brody of the glens appears to imagine that something called a report –presumably archaeological, is put in with the application for all to see. Maybe the tartan brody may like to point us to an example or two. Here is an example representative of a common type of planning application provided by a planning authority which has prevision for statements to be made about Biodiversity and Geological Conservation, trees, floods but no mention about archaeology, reports, whatever that might be in brodies mind.

http://planningpages.midsuffolk.gov.uk/online-applications/files/3022870F8E47E51AF4E426869DB6F071/pdf/0761_11-APPLICATION_FORM-396578.pdf

by the way if you go to this boston planning application page

http://www.boston.gov.uk/index.php?optio...temid=3444

links.police.uk attempt to put a cookie on your computer. Does anybody know if this happens elsewhere on planning application web pages, bizzar?

they might like to consider this

http://www.tjs.co.uk/blog/european-priva...ookies.htm

[tmsarch]

We need the other way mentioned in PPS.

Hi Uo1 - I would be interested to know what this other way mentioned in PPS actually is? I've tried to work out from your replies how you see a post-LA curatorial archaeological system work, but cannot for the life of me work out how you see this functioning. I'd therefore be grateful if you could answer the following questions (preferably without reference to pensions or charities) as I am genuinely interested in what you are trying to say:

1 - do you think that the loss of jobs at SYAS is a good thing and if so why?
2 - what system do you see replacing curators providing expert advice to planning officers?
3 - what is the other way mentioned in PPS 5?

Here is an example representative of a common type of planning application provided by a planning authority which has prevision for statements to be made about Biodiversity and Geological Conservation, trees, floods but no mention about archaeology

I am not sure what you are trying to get at regarding your link to Mid Suffolk Council (I can't actually get the link to work, but that might just be me). Have you selected Mid Suffolk at random or is this where you work?

You seem to suggest that the planning forms provided by Mid Suffolk Council have no mention of archaeology but this is not true. Part of the planning application pack includes a local validation checklist. To quote Mid Suffolk Council "every application must comply to a set of National Standards and also a set of Local Validation Standards". Archaeology is clearly included in the Local Validation Requirements for planning applications and the validation checklist that accompanies the planning application forms on MSDC's website clearly includes archaeology. It's even listed in the checklist above Biodiversity and Geological Issues.

[Unitof1]

Hello tmsarch
sorry about the link. It was just to a planning application document picked out at random. Here is the form that it was on http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/uploads/appPDF/W3520Form004_england_en.pdf

found here

http://www.midsuffolk.gov.uk/PlanningAndBuilding/PlanningServices/Application+Forms/Application+Forms.htm

I would like to see archaeology mentioned on this form. I find this form used in many districts


1. Yes on the basis that archaeology does not need council curators as far as I am concerned. I want them gone so that we can get on with doing archaeology without them and their cost. Mostly I want the archaeology to be undertaken pre determination. I think that the curators drag it into post descion too much. I don think anybody losing their job is good.

2. I see a relatively straight forward one based on objections to planning applications with the planning officers following planning guidance?s, local plans, political influence, local concern. Much like they do on choosing brick colours and types

3. The way that it is mentioned

HE7.1 In decision-making12 local planning authorities should seek to identify and assess
the particular significance of any element of the historic environment that may be
affected by the relevant proposal (including by development affecting the setting of
a heritage asset) taking account of:

(i) evidence provided with the application

its the evidence provided with the application which I think should come from commercial sources and not be paid for through pre application inquiry fees

HE6.1 Local planning authorities should require an applicant to provide a description of
the significance of the heritage assets affected and the contribution of their setting
to that significance. The level of detail should be proportionate to the importance
of the heritage asset and no more than is sufficient to understand the potential
impact of the proposal on the significance of the heritage asset.

and

HE6.2 This information together with an assessment of the impactof the proposal should
be set out in the application(within the design and access statement when this is
required) as part of the explanation of the design concept. It should detail the
sources that have been considered and the expertise that has been consulted.

I dont see why I acting for the applicant cannot make recommendations to the planning officer or the planning committee
never been to mid sommer sulfolk in my life nor have any intension