23rd April 2012, 07:03 PM
Unitof1 Wrote:sorry I forget just why are councils closing down HERs and laying off their advisors.
Because it costs the Council money, it doesn't cost the applicant anything to have the Council's archaeologist assess whether their proposal is likely to require archaeological work. Presumably if 15-20,000 applicants were asking your opinion, you'd be charging each of them something for the privilege of your expert opinion.
Unitof1 Wrote:All I am trying to do is put forward the backup plan.-which is that all planning applications and validations should very loudly ask for archaeological consideration to be provided by the appllicant.
So all applications are accompanied by an archaeological statement prepared by someone like yourself - how does the planner know that the statement is true and credible without their own in-house advisor? Trust you? Given that you said on the Fenland thread that you'd basically say whatever Councillor Melton wanted provided he 'had enough grease', how could the planner have any confidence that you weren't just saying that there was no archaeological issue because the developer had paid you to say that? Similarly, how could they trust the professional ethics of someone who said only two days ago that he'd chuck human remains on the spoil heap rather than record them properly, 'unless there was some obvious loot?
One of the advantages of having Council archaeologists is that they're outside the commercial sector (or should be - I'm not comfortable with Council units, Trusts or Consultants who also do contracting work ). Purely as a member of the public, I prefer to have regulatory bodies, whether in archaeology or other sectors, who aren't in the pay of the people they're regulating. In the same way, I'd rather have a publicly-funded police force and judiciary, rather than one that depended on the mafia or Rupert Murdoch for its money.
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum