19th April 2012, 12:43 PM
Many, if not all, of the LPAs in the county that I work do include an archaeological prompt as part of the application forms - this isn't on the 1APP form but on the local validation tick-sheet requirements that have to accompany any planning application. The majority of the council's have some form of on-line guidance as to what archaeological information is required under the local validation requirements (although as I have mentioned before on the forum - there is an issue of 'quality' when it comes to the validation of submitted information).
I've just checked our stats for 2011 (a relitively quite year for us) and apparently we logged (i.e. provided advice on) 835 planning applications last year between the two DC officers. This naturally only forms a small percentage of the total planning applications submitted across the county (sorry don't have these stats to hand). With the resources we have we cannot look at every simgle planning application submitted. Our approach is to use a screening trigger mechanism that prompts when the LPA should contact us. This involves being consulted on all applications over a certain size threshold and in addition we supply all of our LPAs with a GIS layer for areas of potential/interest whereby any application (regardless of size) that falls within that area triggers a consultation. In some places these areas are focussed on historic settlements/PAS or find hotspots/areas where previous discoveries are made - whilst in other high potential areas the GIS layer provides uniform widescale coverage to ensure we capture everything.
We do try to check through local-lists where possible within our workload, but generally find that the GIS consultation trigger works well for us and the LPAs are happy to use it and we rarely have any problems about not being consulted on a planning application. That is not to say that if an application falls outside of one of our GIS trigger layers we cannot pick it up from local planning lists and provide advice.
PS Unit - I won't go off and read PPS 5 as you suggest - you have you're own 'unique' interpretation on how that document is applied, thankfully no-one else - be it developer, planner or archaeologist (pension grabbing or otherwise) - seem to agree with your interpretation. In any event you may not have heard, but the PPS have now been entirely replced by the NPPF.
I've just checked our stats for 2011 (a relitively quite year for us) and apparently we logged (i.e. provided advice on) 835 planning applications last year between the two DC officers. This naturally only forms a small percentage of the total planning applications submitted across the county (sorry don't have these stats to hand). With the resources we have we cannot look at every simgle planning application submitted. Our approach is to use a screening trigger mechanism that prompts when the LPA should contact us. This involves being consulted on all applications over a certain size threshold and in addition we supply all of our LPAs with a GIS layer for areas of potential/interest whereby any application (regardless of size) that falls within that area triggers a consultation. In some places these areas are focussed on historic settlements/PAS or find hotspots/areas where previous discoveries are made - whilst in other high potential areas the GIS layer provides uniform widescale coverage to ensure we capture everything.
We do try to check through local-lists where possible within our workload, but generally find that the GIS consultation trigger works well for us and the LPAs are happy to use it and we rarely have any problems about not being consulted on a planning application. That is not to say that if an application falls outside of one of our GIS trigger layers we cannot pick it up from local planning lists and provide advice.
PS Unit - I won't go off and read PPS 5 as you suggest - you have you're own 'unique' interpretation on how that document is applied, thankfully no-one else - be it developer, planner or archaeologist (pension grabbing or otherwise) - seem to agree with your interpretation. In any event you may not have heard, but the PPS have now been entirely replced by the NPPF.