24th March 2011, 12:12 AM
Unitof1 Wrote:gpstone care to name a "No, on all counts. They're the same as you or I or any other kind of commercial company " charity/unit, possibly one close to your home, so that we can contemplate its sameness to the real world of diggging. PS I suspect that on grounds of box sections/pension you must be a least 20 years older than me
I think you're thinking of Dinosaur when it comes to box sections, Unit.
As for who the regulations apply to, if a company also has charitable status and is organised in that way (take Wessex or Oxford if you want an example) it is subject to the same rules and regulations. Not only this, the accounts will be to some extent published and accessible through the charities commission, although they can be organised as with any accounts to be somewhat opaque. As well as being audited, many large developers/clients will often expect to be allowed to inspect a company's accounts as part of the tenders process or as part of the contract phase in order to establish whether the contractor can carry any financial risk inherent in the project, which essentially acts as a further vote of financial confidence. If a large archaeological business isn't financially solvent, it often wouldn't be able to get the larger work in the first place which has until recently sustained a lot of the larger firms.
All that aside and like I said before, I don't have direct experience of MoLA or its more recent subsidiaries so can't speak about that situation specifically. But this is all fairly standard stuff. I assume your experience is different.......