16th January 2006, 10:03 AM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by drpeterwardle
I have to say that the current system of local (district) planning authourities contracting out archaeology to county councils is far from satisfactory in many respects.
Given the changes in the planning system and the proposed unified system of designation that are on the way the place for archaeologists in the conservation section of the planning departments in City, District and Unitary authourities.
Not sure I agree here. Certainly where I work, if you actually begin to focus in on the archaeology of a particular district, you can get very skewed archaeological and/or historical viewpoints developing. As the knowledge base is limited, you really need to stand back and take a much wider perspective. Fair enough, a lot of modern County boundaries are arbitrary, but district divisions are little better (they change very frequently too) and at least most of the rural counties have been established for a long time, so the general areas have some historical validity. I think you'd find as well that in a lot of cases, the amount of work per district wouldn't be enough to justify employing a full-time archaeologist. One of the big worries I have about the unified designation system, is that districts will do precisely as you say, and place the archaeological work in their areas into the conservation department, but not feel able to justify employing a specialist archaeologist to do it. I know of a number of archaeological decisions taken at district level by non-archaeologist Conservation or Planning Officers, and they're often so far off the mark as to be difficult to implement or enforce properly.
I seem to remember references in the Heritage Protection Review consultation to creating networked sub-regional teams, which would effectively shift the archaeological work further away from the often very narrow local perspective of single districts. There wasn't much information given, but moves which fully recognise the importance and neccessity of taking account of the broader picture, whilst at the same time recognising issues like local distinctiveness, would seem to be sensible.