29th August 2012, 08:20 PM
Sadly Uo1 seems to think the removal of the archaeological "expertise" (and I use that word with trepidation!) from the Planning Authority will somehow open up whole new avenues of work for the commercial folk. Instead, once developers twig that their assessments are being ignored and rubber-stamped by the non-archaeologist planners they'll simply download generic cut&paste rubbish from the interweb like lazy school tykes, and hopeful Uo1s will find their existing advisory workload will dry up.
A return to County Units is a good idea, but we'd need to redesign the whole system so instead of letting developers hire the cheapest tenderer to deal with their site they instead pay a fixed fee into a pot and get their site dug by the County Unit in return. No more low-ball bids, no more cash running out in PX, and no potential spiralling costs for developers to deal with.
The current system is John Glenn's lift-off nightmare, where he realised he was sitting on 2million pounds of explosives in a ship built by the cheapest bidder...
A return to County Units is a good idea, but we'd need to redesign the whole system so instead of letting developers hire the cheapest tenderer to deal with their site they instead pay a fixed fee into a pot and get their site dug by the County Unit in return. No more low-ball bids, no more cash running out in PX, and no potential spiralling costs for developers to deal with.
The current system is John Glenn's lift-off nightmare, where he realised he was sitting on 2million pounds of explosives in a ship built by the cheapest bidder...