27th November 2014, 06:34 PM
I try to keep up to date with the discussion on bajrfed, but rarely comment these days, especially as I'm a county archaeological officer and discussions around that subject generally seem to get side-tracked by one poster's view as to how archaeology and planning should work.
Unfortunately I think in this instance Marc is wide of the mark – he is promoting an alternate system, but that is a separate debate. The issue that Jack initially raised (quite rightly in my opinion) is the hard and deep cuts that have been made and likely will continue to be made within the present planning system.
These cuts are not just to county archaeological officers, but across the planning system and especially in built heritage/conservation teams. Many councils are teetering on the brink of financial failure, with such pressures it is clear that historic environment functions may be ready casualties.
Unfortunately at the same time we seem to be facing a steady stream of low-cost contractors undercutting established companies, severe cuts to local authority planning teams and pertinently huge losses in planning enforcement staff. This along with an upturn in development seems to be creating a perfect storm and it is the archaeology that ultimately suffers.
My colleagues and I are constantly fighting to keep up standards in archaeological works and trying to bring those developers and archaeologists who are deliberately and willfully cutting corners to task, but without effective local authority enforcement teams this is seemingly a losing battle.
It is disheartening to see professional archaeologists deliberately lying to me, attempting to mislead me and misrepresenting the significance of archaeology on such a regular basis, just to keep themselves in the developer’s pockets – the same developer who is laughing all the way to the bank.
Unfortunately a few ‘rogue’ companies end up taking up a disproportionate amount of my time, meaning meagre resources are further stretched and the archaeology suffers doubly. It is not just in the field where these problems are seen, but also in the shocking decline in reporting and post-excavation standards. Often I find myself rejecting the same report multiple times and often see the same issues coming back again and again.
Such practices unfortunately mean everyone suffers and this constant undercutting and corner cutting does nothing to promote archaeology as a profession or help improve pay and conditions for anyone in the sector.
Sorry for the long rant, but it seems to be a particularly depressing time to be a curatorial archaeologists and I sense may of the problems we are seeing are impacting other parts of the profession equally.
Unfortunately I think in this instance Marc is wide of the mark – he is promoting an alternate system, but that is a separate debate. The issue that Jack initially raised (quite rightly in my opinion) is the hard and deep cuts that have been made and likely will continue to be made within the present planning system.
These cuts are not just to county archaeological officers, but across the planning system and especially in built heritage/conservation teams. Many councils are teetering on the brink of financial failure, with such pressures it is clear that historic environment functions may be ready casualties.
Unfortunately at the same time we seem to be facing a steady stream of low-cost contractors undercutting established companies, severe cuts to local authority planning teams and pertinently huge losses in planning enforcement staff. This along with an upturn in development seems to be creating a perfect storm and it is the archaeology that ultimately suffers.
My colleagues and I are constantly fighting to keep up standards in archaeological works and trying to bring those developers and archaeologists who are deliberately and willfully cutting corners to task, but without effective local authority enforcement teams this is seemingly a losing battle.
It is disheartening to see professional archaeologists deliberately lying to me, attempting to mislead me and misrepresenting the significance of archaeology on such a regular basis, just to keep themselves in the developer’s pockets – the same developer who is laughing all the way to the bank.
Unfortunately a few ‘rogue’ companies end up taking up a disproportionate amount of my time, meaning meagre resources are further stretched and the archaeology suffers doubly. It is not just in the field where these problems are seen, but also in the shocking decline in reporting and post-excavation standards. Often I find myself rejecting the same report multiple times and often see the same issues coming back again and again.
Such practices unfortunately mean everyone suffers and this constant undercutting and corner cutting does nothing to promote archaeology as a profession or help improve pay and conditions for anyone in the sector.
Sorry for the long rant, but it seems to be a particularly depressing time to be a curatorial archaeologists and I sense may of the problems we are seeing are impacting other parts of the profession equally.