18th June 2008, 02:50 PM
Posted by Sparky:
However, in relation to costs, we are talking about a planning decision here. While curators shouldn't be swayed too much by costs, like all others in the planning system they are under a requirement to be 'reasonable'. That means that they can only impose a requirement for archaeological work of any kind if there is a reasonable balance between the costs of the work and the archaeological loss that would occur without them. Otherwise, you could make developers spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on the off-chance that they might find a field ditch.
The upshot is that you have to make case-by-case decisions. Some (most?) pipelines will justify a watching brief along their whole length, or most of it. In other cases (a minority?) will only be necessary on a proportion of the route. On a few, it might be quite justified not to have a watching brief at all. The point is, you have to justify the decision each time on the merits of the case, in the light of relevant policy (mainly PPG16).
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
Quote:quote:As for costs, that shouldn't be the concern of a curator but for a representative of the clientI'm not going to comment on the specific case, because I don't know it, and I get the impression that neither do most other people on this thread.
However, in relation to costs, we are talking about a planning decision here. While curators shouldn't be swayed too much by costs, like all others in the planning system they are under a requirement to be 'reasonable'. That means that they can only impose a requirement for archaeological work of any kind if there is a reasonable balance between the costs of the work and the archaeological loss that would occur without them. Otherwise, you could make developers spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on the off-chance that they might find a field ditch.
The upshot is that you have to make case-by-case decisions. Some (most?) pipelines will justify a watching brief along their whole length, or most of it. In other cases (a minority?) will only be necessary on a proportion of the route. On a few, it might be quite justified not to have a watching brief at all. The point is, you have to justify the decision each time on the merits of the case, in the light of relevant policy (mainly PPG16).
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished