1st September 2006, 01:40 PM
Paul Belford and the others are right - there is certainly the [u]potential</u> for a conflict of interest and perhaps it would be better if this potential were to be removed.
However I must say that as a consultant I have rarely seen any obvious instances of favouritism or deliberate hindrance by a County Mountie in a county where there is also a County Field Unit - I have put together programmes of work recently in Essex and always been impressed with the level of separation between the curators and the field unit, and similarly with the five regional units in Wales that house the curators.
I am acting on a major urban project where the city council produced a planning brief in which they waxed lyrical about the skills, experience, brilliance etc of the city council's in-house field unit and recommended to prospective developers that they should use this unit for all fieldwork. Unfortunately 6 months after the Planning Brief was issued the City Council closed the field unit and sacked virtually all of the staff, making it impossible to follow the Planning Brief on this issue. C'est la vie.
Beamo
However I must say that as a consultant I have rarely seen any obvious instances of favouritism or deliberate hindrance by a County Mountie in a county where there is also a County Field Unit - I have put together programmes of work recently in Essex and always been impressed with the level of separation between the curators and the field unit, and similarly with the five regional units in Wales that house the curators.
I am acting on a major urban project where the city council produced a planning brief in which they waxed lyrical about the skills, experience, brilliance etc of the city council's in-house field unit and recommended to prospective developers that they should use this unit for all fieldwork. Unfortunately 6 months after the Planning Brief was issued the City Council closed the field unit and sacked virtually all of the staff, making it impossible to follow the Planning Brief on this issue. C'est la vie.
Beamo