9th December 2011, 06:44 PM
zephyr Wrote:I'm sick of this RO thing, one curator informed me I could not practice as a sole trader as I was not an RO and that it was English Heritage Law! What....!
This is just nonsense, and it's worrying that a curator would have such a poor understanding of the planning system and the role and limitations of what English Heritage can and cannot do. Ask him/her to provide the relevant legal statutes that state this to be the case, and if they can't, but still persist in their position, go above their head.
zephyr Wrote:Is it not a restriction of trade to stop non RO companies trading? Let us not forget that archaeologists working in this country need not be qualified, registered or indeed experienced to legally practice archaeology in th UK.
Certainly seems like restraint of trade to me, particularly given the reason stated. Even if a particular curator was unwilling to allow you to undertake commercial work in the area they cover, that wouldn't prevent you from setting up as a sole trader and working elsewhere. I don't know anything about you, so it may be possible that the curator doesn't think that you've got sufficient experience to be able to work unsupervised on commercial sites, and is trying to find a reason to justify that decision. Even so, they can't stop you setting up as a sole trader, but they would be able to say to any developer who said that they were planning to use you for a development site that they didn't think you were experienced enough to do the job. But that decision would need to be based on evidence, rather than simply because you're not a member of a particular club.
zephyr Wrote:Does anyone know if it's possible to be banned from a county/district because draft reports submited needed editing?
Wouldn't have thought so, I've never heard of it happening. I've certainly heard of reports being rejected because they were factually inaccurate or so poorly written as to be incomprehensible, but the only requirement in those cases would be for the report to be sorted and resubmitted. I suppose if this happened with every report submitted by a particular company, and the curator had to spend loads of time correcting these errors, they might get fairly pissed off with the people concerned, though!
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum