CIfA Client guide published

[P Prentice]

cobblers. a heritage statement can obviate the need for evaluation.
it is possible to yield a higher percentage of profit from a heritage statement than an evaluation.
an evaluation is unlikely to demonstrate an assets setting.
an evaluation is what you do when you have creamed as much as possible from the other mumbojumbo

[Marc Berger]

cobblers this has nothing to do with shoes
why would I not want to do evaluations!

I am a one trick pony what can I say. Just out of interest how much profit do you think that you can make from regurgitating the HER? In your system you are accepting that quite often you will get it wrong as in there was something there. In my system I can find things that arnt that interesting but I still found them before they are destroyed forever, Trevor.(and then throw them away forever) Trevor.

[Dinosaur]

...Just out of interest how much profit do you think that you can make from regurgitating the HER?...

Probably quite a lot, that's what some of these 'environmental consultancies' get away with calling a 'Desk-Based Assessment', just a HER list (why do the curators pass these, anyway????) and then the proper archaeologists have to pick up the pieces...that's what you get for employing newbee graduates and the like as 'consultants', sadly the clients can't tell the difference and are just getting ripped off. Keeps EH busy dealing with pipelines and the like put through scheduled sites that they 'didn't know about', anyway... :face-crying:

[Dinosaur]

cobblers. a heritage statement can obviate the need for evaluation.
it is possible to yield a higher percentage of profit from a heritage statement than an evaluation.
an evaluation is unlikely to demonstrate an assets setting.
an evaluation is what you do when you have creamed as much as possible from the other mumbojumbo

Slightly embarrassingly, I'm partly with Marc on this one, I've done plenty of jobs where the DBA/heritage statement/whatever had pretty much written the thing off but actually going out and digging a hole has caused a massive re-think. In urban areas you pretty much have to go digging for anything earlier than your earliest (decent) cartographic evidence?

[Marc Berger]

20 minutes in and at the moment England girls are playing like England boys and letting the oppo play in their half.

'environmental consultancies' get away with calling a 'Desk-Based Assessment', just a HER list (why do the curators pass these, anyway????) and then the proper archaeologists have to pick up the pieces...that's what you get for employing newbee graduates and the like as 'consultants', sadly the clients can't tell the difference and are just getting ripped off.

a real desk based assessment can only be done by somebody who is obviously not comfortable sitting at a desk because they don't know that they should take the trowel out of their back pocket. Its in the title, "desk based assessment" only makes sense if it comes from a field archaeologist going "looky at me I am sitting at a desk." because to them its not normal (should be called a bank by the way, bank based assessment).
1 nil bollocks

[P Prentice]

if you have produced a heritage statement that sez if you build here you will have a severe detrimental impact on the next door grade 1 listed building etc etc etc there will be no point doing an evaluation as they wont get planning permission anyway - keep up.

[Dinosaur]

Can think of any number of Scheduled sites (which are theoretically of equal significance to Grade I buildings) that in reality look like Swiss cheese below ground, with most of the holes 'monitored' (often without anyone even plotting in the hole let alone getting a tape and notepad out ) rather than properly excavated and recorded

[Marc Berger]

if you have produced a heritage statement that sez if you build here you will have a severe detrimental impact on the next door grade 1 listed building etc etc etc there will be no point doing an evaluation as they wont get planning permission anyway - keep up.

. So that how you made your billion, i dont suppose that you have any spare clients who want me to write a heritage statement so that that don't get their application accepted. Keep up, how can I, you have got all the good clients and I have all the bad ones. I will just have to keep looking to see if I can see any of next doors settings in my evaluation trenches. Haven't found one yet which is a bugger because its not what the chattering classes said should be there.

[BAJR]

Do you just hate Heritage Statements because yours was turned down for being a bit limp? :face-huh:

It is a case of using one, or another or both , as fits the situation. A heritage Statement has value just as much as Evaluation. it is their proper implementation and use that is important.

[Marc Berger]

Hello Hosty I think to try and answer this one I am going to have to take my cloths off.

whats go on with me is that I came into commercial archaeology, after doing a degree, at the ground level with that as my desk based, so to speak, and was never really that keen on more "desk based" as it appeared to me that desked based were justified on the grounds of 1. evaluations being expensive and some how 2. desked based made you a better digger and 3. desk based might get the client out of having to do any evaluation. So the word evaluation tended to be blurred with assessment and the whole business was taken over by consultants and nobody ever dug their own desk based assessment or ever intended to. So stuff'em. Still Limp you say.

Thing is that I had spent a lot of time being told I was not a good digger to try and educate me and I had to learn about trowels wearing holes in back pockets the hard way which is by wearing down a trowel in your back pocket and I also spent a lot of time doing evaluations often based on the nearby presence of some heritage assets, designated or not, for which we actually found absolutely no direct evidence (purely on the reason that there was no direct stratigraphic relationship). And this is ppg16 days. As I grow up so did the local mounties and they settled into service agreements with planning authorities and which evolved into contracts hidden behind confidentiality. Occasionally they would allow somebody to call them the county archaeologist and that helped with their limp issues but not mine.

And then policies changed and changed again and became frameworks which nobody knows if they are real or not or if the local plan is either but the mounties, with full knowledge of their service agreements, climbed all over NPPF and invented Heritage statement and even though they could not get it into NPPF and had to use the terms desk based and evaluation to give them some credibility and had to call it what ever tsmarsh said it was short for.

You could call it a Description of the Significance of any Heritage Assets Affected by the Development Statement, but Heritage Statement seems somehow simpler…

and that para 128 which is about as relevant to an evaluation as a tissue is to mount Vesuvius.

It is a case of using one, or another or both , as fits the situation. A heritage Statement has value just as much as Evaluation. it is their proper implementation and use that is important.

what tsmarsh did not mention is that they invented 128 to help them out with para. 129. And para 129 is very much about how they describe their service agreements with the authorities but these service agreements were probably not designed to furnish 129 so the only time when anybody is made to write a 128 is when the mounties are worried that they might be called for a 129. I know very limp.

129. Local planning authorities should identify and assess the particular
significance of any heritage asset that may be affected by a proposal
(including by development affecting the setting of a heritage asset) taking
account of the available evidence and any necessary expertise. They should
take this assessment into account when considering the impact of a proposal
on a heritage asset, to avoid or minimise conflict between the heritage asset’s
conservation and any aspect of the proposal.

and I don't know if that is also called a Heritage Statement or if a mounty just has to give the appearance that they know these thing.

I know its hard and that the more that you try and understand the harder it gets but you have also got to wonder if para 141

141. Local planning authorities should make information about the significance of
the historic environment gathered as part of plan-making or development
management publicly accessible.

is referring to the mounties 129 which makes the mounties 129 all the more relevant.

so really heritage statements should be done by the mounties. At the moment I am wondering if you could use the data protection act to make them produce all that they know for a site. I know that's still a bit limp but I never said that it wasnt going to be hard.

but it gets harder. Why would anybody want a heritage statement if when applying for outline permission they were not asked to produce one?

Bit warm today I imagine I will take a cold shower.