2nd April 2007, 05:48 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Gog
What a great chance for some of our larger corporate 'Tesco' units to swallow another minnow.
Not so sure that you could describe the Cambs County unit as 'minnows'.
According to whether you put more faith in the IFA or Current Archaeology estimate of how many employees there are in this unit, Cambridgeshire lay somewhere between the 9th to the 13th largest archaeological contractor in the UK.
Surely this situation could be avoided if the 5 county and 1 university units that share borders with Cambridgeshire, collaborated to create an East Anglia Archaeological Co-op. Five of the 6 units that could form such a body are already RAOs. A co-operative 'body' representing all 6 units would be (my estmate) the 2nd largest RAO in the IFA. An archaeological co-op would protect the long established heritage of archaeological organisation in East Anglia, widen the jobs and resources pool available for archaeology, whilst still allowing the existing units to operate within their traditional 'home' areas. There might well be many economies of scale resulting from such a move (particularly regarding admin, pay and pension matters, where the local government units could use a single LA 'admin provider', as already happens I believe between some sections of Cambs and Suffolk County Councils).
My biggest fear (living as I do in the furthest extreme of East Anglia) is the domino effect that might follow the loss of a cornerstone of local archaeological provision in our region.