A taste of things to come

[BAJR]

Unit has a unique interpretation on life in general... but can come up with some gems.

Back on this though, when I was a planning archaeologist I looked at it like this… having a trigger… good idea.. BUT as I was going to have to check each app to ensure they had not missed anything then what was the point. I was going to check each one anyway with my own filter. Admittedly I was only dealing with about 1500 is apps a year. Relying on the Planning Officer to note an app that needs further examination for archaeology seems to defeat the purpose of a planning archaeologist. I saw that as my job

[tmsarch]

Unit has a unique interpretation on life in general... but can come up with some gems.

Back on this though, when I was a planning archaeologist I looked at it like this… having a trigger… good idea.. BUT as I was going to have to check each app to ensure they had not missed anything then what was the point. I was going to check each one anyway with my own filter. Admittedly I was only dealing with about 1500 is apps a year. Relying on the Planning Officer to note an app that needs further examination for archaeology seems to defeat the purpose of a planning archaeologist. I saw that as my job

I can understand where you're coming from if you were dealing with 1,500 applications total per year - but one of our Districts could generate that many alone. Across the county there's going to be somewhere in the region of 10x that number of planning applications. If you add in all the County-own applications, solicitor enquiries, utilities works, pre-apps, etc I guess we'd be looking at somewhere between 15,000 and 20,0000 applications per year. This simply wouldn't be sustainable between the two of us to manually scan and appraise every single application.

You say that you felt a trigger would be no use to you as you'd be having to check each app to ensure they'd not missed anything anyway - surely if the trigger was robust and the planning officers were clear on how it worked then you wouldn't need to check. We're not relying on the planning officer to note whether an app needs further examination for archaeology - we're making that decision by saying that any application that falls within a 'trigger area' will come our way. What we are doing is filtering out those applications that we do not feel we need to see. Whilst I understand your method was different I hope you will appreciate that this is a system that works for us and given the staffing levels and number of applications we are dealing with is the only sustainable way of dealing with things.

I was perhaps a little harsh on unit - like gold panning, after sifting through loads of murky sludge there might be a small nugget of gold there. For me though I find there's often an awful lot of mud to get through and when it comes to currators and his attitudes to planning all I ever seem to come across is a lot of pyrite (and no that's not cockney rhyming slang for sh*te, but...)!

[Unitof1]

You havent got a clue have you. I want the 15000 to 20000 at my door before they have gone anywhere near yours. I want to take a few bob off each-in the name of archaeology.

I guess we'd be looking at somewhere between 15,000 and 20,0000 applications per year-between two of you-how very nice for you. So instead of making the developer undertake the archaeological consideration with a specialist little old lady archaeologist you have triggers plans HERs fingers crossed heavey work loads but are really decent archaeologists, dont worry you will find us all work off the back of the regualtions and as well make sure that field archaeologists are not cowboys and ripping off the poor developers. Oh look you really dont have to worry we have online validation. Your lot are a bunch of amateurs.

[Winders]

Personally, I consider Unitof1 on the basis of his past postings to be a racist bigot with little or no understanding of the planning system and a massive chip on his shoulder about something. These days I keep him on my ignore list and don't have to worry about whatever he's ranting on about.

[BAJR]

Thanks tmsarch. I think it is a horses for courses approach. I was lucky I suppose. though to be honest, half the planners would also try and slip stuff through without me seeing. ahem cough. one even took to putting a standard watching brief condition on anything...

Triggers will have to be robust. and for me, given the nature of teh county I had. it was mostly rural soon to be covered in over 24000 extra houses as a dormitory for Edinburgh. I had blanks everywhere, so had to deal with each application on potential more often that being able to have triggers.
That said, when I first started, I put a 5% eval onto a massive area which resulted in over 2km of linear trenches. result.... Nada! could you do that in south England!

So I take your point on that. and well made.

Perhaps Unit should be a curator for a week --- oh the fun! ... Units Chip can be seen from Space

[Martin Locock]

It does seem odd to invest so much in well-developed HERs and then leave it to the vigiliance or whim of non-archaeological planning officers to trigger even a cursory consideration of heritage issues.

[Unitof1]

This appears to be where its all going no where
http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/...505220.pdf

it does appear that who ever they are change this regulation(?) every few years (which is all the last desparate labour party years)

It replaces the following documents, which are cancelled with effect from 6 April 2010:
? section 3 of Circular 01/2006 Design and Access Statements
? all of Circular 02/2008 Standard Application Forms and Validation
? all of The Validation of Planning Applications: guidance for local planning authorities (CLG, 2007)

somehow this affects the wonderous 1app form. What does 1app stand for?

[Dinosaur]

You think we could get a grant from somewhere to excavate Unit's Chip? Can I write the WSI? Please! Please!

And we'd need a snappy title for the monograph (unfortunately 'Holes in the Landscape' seems to have taken recently)....

[P Prentice]

You havent got a clue have you. I want the 15000 to 20000 at my door before they have gone anywhere near yours. I want to take a few bob off each-in the name of archaeology.

I guess we'd be looking at somewhere between 15,000 and 20,0000 applications per year-between two of you-how very nice for you. So instead of making the developer undertake the archaeological consideration with a specialist little old lady archaeologist you have triggers plans HERs fingers crossed heavey work loads but are really decent archaeologists, dont worry you will find us all work off the back of the regualtions and as well make sure that field archaeologists are not cowboys and ripping off the poor developers. Oh look you really dont have to worry we have online validation. Your lot are a bunch of amateurs.

somewhere amidst the miasma is a valid point
if the lpa archaeologists dont charge for development advice - why cant we?

[Marcus Brody]

somewhere amidst the miasma is a valid point
if the lpa archaeologists dont charge for development advice - why cant we?

There's absolutely nothing stopping any contractor charging for development advice, other than the fact that most developers don't want to pay for it (and won't pay for it if they know that the Council will do it for nothing anyway). As it stands, any potential developer can go to a contractor and say 'I'm looking at building a new housing estate in that field, do you think there's likely to be any archaeological issue?' Indeed, some big developers already do this as a matter of course, either in advance of purchasing land or before submitting a planning application. The contractor's assessment would then be submitted in support of the application, and would be considered by the planner / Council archaeologist. If the conclusions drawn are reasonable, and any mitigation proposals are sensible, there's no reason why they wouldn't be adopted wholesale by the planning department (conversely, if the Council archaeologist thinks that the assessment is wrong or underplays the potential archaeological issue, he or she is at liberty to disagree with the conclusion / mitigation proposals, and ask for something else).

Where I'd disagree with PP is in the scale of this. As I said, some large developers already do this, but for the majority of applications and applicants it would simply be an additional expense that they may not need and certainly wouldn't want to pay. For most householders putting up a small extension, it wouldn't really be necessary to pay a contractor a couple of hundred quid for an assessment, as the chances are fairly slim that it would raise an archaeological issue. If it turns out an application of this type did raise an issue, it would likely be picked up by the Council archaeologist anyway, who'd identify it for no extra cost. Yes, the householder would still have to appoint a contractor to undertake any mitigation work, but they'd at least have saved a bit of money on the initial assessment.