standards anyone?

[Marcus Brody]

It is then the responsibility of the Planning officer and the local councils to decide what to do about it? Seems the archaeologist have very little power

That's also my understanding of the system. I know someone who works as a Council archaeologist, and he said that one of the most frustrating aspects of the job is that even when the developer has blatantly ignored an archaeological condition, it's very difficult to get the Council to take any enforcement action. It's very easy to criticise curatorial archaeologists, but it's important to remember that in most cases, they only act as advisors to the planning department. In most cases, they have no direct power themselves to take enforcement action against a developer, they can only advise the planner that action should be taken. If the planner (or councillors on the planning committee) decide to ignore that advice, there's very little the curatorial archaeologist can do.

Also who monitors academic and community excavations? I take that at the moment unless the site is protected by law any one, with the landowners permission, can excavate any where.

Again, that's also my understanding. While the Council archaeologist may visit community or academic excavations, they don't have any power to specify that work should be done in a certain way or to a certain level, as their remit usually only relates to work undertaken as part of the planning system. Indeed, according to my tame curatorial mole, in a lot of cases the Council archaeologist won't even be told that the work is going on (academics are apparently particularly bad in this regard). What I would say is that the number of academic or community excavations is tiny compared to the huge amount of commercial work that goes on, even in the current economic situation, and the vast majority of these will be conducted to a standard that is as good as, if not better than, commercial sites. On that basis, I'd say that it would be better to concentrate on improving standards in the more regulated and more numerous commercial sector first.