28th May 2011, 12:19 PM
Marcus Brody Wrote:This certainly happens. Up here, most Councils now have online planning systems where all documentation relating to an application can be viewed online, and I imagine it's the same in England. I've found that in most cases that I've looked at, the Council archaeologist will have advised pre-determination evaluation as the preferred course, possibly saying that evaluation under a condition would be a less-acceptable alternative, but the planner decides to use the condition. When I asked a curator why they included the option of a condition when they would prefer pre-determination, I was told (off the record) that if a condition was not included and pre-determination evaluation is given as the only option, a lot of planners will simply grant the consent without any archaeological work taking place. You can argue that the curator should stick to his-or-her guns, and insist on pre-determination evaluation, but ultimately it's the planner that makes the decision, and apparently a large proportion of them prefer a simple condition to an arguement with a developer about why they should spend money undertaking work which might result in their not obtaining planning consent.
I feel this post may fall foul of RedEarth's proscription on preteniousness (and if it didn't before, that last sentance will have surely pushed it over the edge!)
Not at all, there was nothing pretentious in that entire post, as far I am concerned. This thread seems to have become quite interesting, which is nice.
The standard and understanding of archaeological conditions (pre determination or post) does seem to be massively varying and local authorities, who get the last say, seem to be able to ignore at will the advice of the county HES (not the same as HER), at least where things are set up in this manner and presumably that varies quite a lot nationally. The concern seems to be that county HES recommends x type of work to one local authority planner and they say, 'OK we'll make that a requirement', while another local planner just ignores it completely. This creates the odd situation where very similar types of work on similar sites have completely different conditions. If I were a developer I would find this very frustrating, or a handy means of getting a condition removed - 'you didn't ask for it on the virtually identical site just down the road'. As an archaeologist (whatever they are) it's worrying as it creates black holes in understanding of certain areas and biases in others and loss of archaeological/historic material/sites/information. PPS5 is all about understanding and significance is it not? If this sort of thing continues then surely that decision is already being made by a non-specialist local planner contrary to the advice of the specialist council officer. What about research aims? How can they be vaguely followed if this degree of random bias is being added to the data? If it was agreed that non archaeological work was ever to be required when a certain type of site was expected or identified - say medieval pottery kilns, archaeologically that would be a pretty bad thing to happen. When certain planners are routinely not putting archaeological conditions on developments that their colleagues in the same region are you get a similar (if not quite as drastic) problem. What was this topic about again? Oh yes, curatorial standards - fine, but forcing local planners to actually pay attention to what they say? Has anyone else come across this? Sorry, very long post.