26th August 2011, 01:44 PM
To expand further on the issue of planning controls, an additional hurdle is that in non-unitary parts of England, by and large archaeological advice is provided by the county council. County council's, while they are the minerals and waste planning authorities, rarely handle other types of planning applications- most are dealt with by district and borough councils acting as local planning authorities. It's one thing for a county archaeologist to walk down the corridor and have a chat with their own enforcement officers regarding potential breaches of conditions on minerals or waste related planning applications, but as has been mentioned keeping in frequent contact with enforcement officers in all the local councils within their patch is considerably more difficult.
Enforcement is often the Cinderella of the planning system sadly - development control gets the workload, policy gets the big ideas, and specialist advisors get the interesting details to play with- so staff can be hard to attract and retain. Combine that with the challenge that enforcement not only requires a very good grasp of the planning system but also the knowledge and ability to interview people and collect evidence that is admissible in a court of law so your staff are harder to find than an average planner, and you can see why most enforcement officers are up to their eyeballs in workload.
Another hurdle that has to be handled is that many councils require that the planning committee votes on taking formal enforcement action, even if most planning decisions are delegated to officers usually. Even if there's a breach and there is ample evidence and it is likely that enforcement will be successful, officers will still need to convince the committee to outlay time and money on action....
Enforcement is often the Cinderella of the planning system sadly - development control gets the workload, policy gets the big ideas, and specialist advisors get the interesting details to play with- so staff can be hard to attract and retain. Combine that with the challenge that enforcement not only requires a very good grasp of the planning system but also the knowledge and ability to interview people and collect evidence that is admissible in a court of law so your staff are harder to find than an average planner, and you can see why most enforcement officers are up to their eyeballs in workload.
Another hurdle that has to be handled is that many councils require that the planning committee votes on taking formal enforcement action, even if most planning decisions are delegated to officers usually. Even if there's a breach and there is ample evidence and it is likely that enforcement will be successful, officers will still need to convince the committee to outlay time and money on action....