9th September 2008, 02:48 PM
Not 100% on-topic I know, but a particular section of Curator Kid's original post caught my eye, as follows:
The same comments about cost probably don't apply to recording works carried out under a planning condition (as opposed to pre-determination evaluation), but even there the authority is required to be reasonable.
In that context, I have had discussions with one curator who told me explicitly that he saw it as his job to extract the maximum possible amount of archaeological investigation out of each development project, and he did not care whether the scale of work he asked for was warranted by the potential significance of archaeological impact. In my view, that was clearly unreasonable.
Another curator pushed to have a proposed development relocated into an area of higher archaeological potential, because that would give him the opportunity to make the developer investigate a site the curator was interested in. In other words, he saw the development as simply an opportunity to extract funding for archaeological investigation for research purposes. Again, manifestly unreasonable.
To bring it back on topic - both of these curators were located in the north of England, and neither of them is still in post.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
Quote:quote:I'm quite happy to recommend an evaluation on a one-house development, although it doesn't happen very often. I did this morning, on an undesignated site, based on information from the local society that medieval artefacts have been coming from the area. I'm quite happy to justify it to the planners (but rarely have to in any depth beyond a letter), and the question of whether or not it is going to cost the developers a prohibitive anount of money is not one I'm bothered about.I don't disagree with this in principle, but I am under the impression that curators, as local authority officers, are required to act in line with policy and on the principle of 'reasonableness'. Both policy and reasonableness in this case are defined by PPG16, which has this to say about evaluations and their costs:
Quote:quote:...it is reasonable for the planning authority to request the prospective developer to arrange for an archaeological field evaluation to be carried out before any decision on the planning application is taken. This sort of evaluation is quite distinct from full archaeological excavation. It is normally a rapid and inexpensive operation...On that basis, a local authority (acting on the curator's advice) that had no regard for the cost when imposing evaluation requirements could be deemed to be acting unreasonably, and would lose any legal challenge by the developer against the requirement.
The same comments about cost probably don't apply to recording works carried out under a planning condition (as opposed to pre-determination evaluation), but even there the authority is required to be reasonable.
In that context, I have had discussions with one curator who told me explicitly that he saw it as his job to extract the maximum possible amount of archaeological investigation out of each development project, and he did not care whether the scale of work he asked for was warranted by the potential significance of archaeological impact. In my view, that was clearly unreasonable.
Another curator pushed to have a proposed development relocated into an area of higher archaeological potential, because that would give him the opportunity to make the developer investigate a site the curator was interested in. In other words, he saw the development as simply an opportunity to extract funding for archaeological investigation for research purposes. Again, manifestly unreasonable.
To bring it back on topic - both of these curators were located in the north of England, and neither of them is still in post.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished