standards anyone?

[Marcus Brody]

...then prosecuting them.

But how often does this ever happen? Very rarely, in my experience. This is not a criticism of the curators, as by the time it reaches that stage, the case will probably have been passed to the planning enforcement team. It's more a recognition of the fact that Councils often seem unwilling to exercise their full enforcement powers in relation to breaches of archaeological conditions. In any case, I think the level of fine involved is unlikely to be much of a deterrent - I'm not sure of whether this is still the case, or what the fine is in England, but until recently the maximum fine in Scotland for breach of planning consent was ?1000.

In addition, the sanctions available to the planning authority relate to the developer rather than the archaeological contracor. Refusal of planning consent, non-discharge of condition, prosecution and fine would all penalise the developer. In terms of steps that could be taken against an archaeological contractor who repeatedly undertook substandard work, or who the Council suspected of deliberately not finding archaeology, I'd imagine that the first step would be a complaint to the IFA, assuming that the company involved was an RAO. Where the company was not an RAO, I suppose the only sanction available would be to remove the company from any list of contractors, assuming that the Council held such a thing. As most contracting companies probably get the bulk of their work through this route, this could potentially be fairly effective. They could also refuse to accept the company as being suited to undertake commercial work, i.e., a developer phones up, says 'I've got a condition on my consent, I'm going to use John Wayne Archaeological Services to do the work', the Council could say 'Sorry, we don't consider that company to be acceptable, you'll have to get someone else'.

That said, I think the Council Archaeologist would need to have some fairly robust evidence of wrongdoing before their legal department would allow them to go down either of the latter two routes, as the contractor involved would be able to argue that such measures amounted to restraint of trade. I think that any such evidence would have to be fairly blatant, something that couldn't be passed off as a difference of professional opinion. Again, this is not a pop at curators, as again I think that their freedom to take such actions are likely to be constrained by what the Council lawyers will let them do.