Consultants sought for Curatorial Standards and guidance project

[P Prentice]

better still - the elected member with the portfolio
you watch and see how fast they respond with that monkey on their back

[Marcus Brody]

Or you could go along to a meeting of the planning committee and raise it there - not sure what the effect of this would be, though - I'd imagine that you might have to explain to them what PSS5 was first!

And in response to Unit's suggestion that what is actually needed is standards for planners, I completely agree! While the IFA is probably not in a position to impose anything on planners, they could certainly help educate them about how they should be applying the existing policies

[P Prentice]

ordinarily i would say a concisely written letter with bullet pointed facts would suffice but unit has difficulty translating from nigerian and marcus would run out of paper

[Marcus Brody]

ordinarily i would say a concisely written letter with bullet pointed facts would suffice but unit has difficulty translating from nigerian and marcus would run out of paper

I'm never sure whether you're joking, P Prentice, or whether you're actually just insulting me. You must be an absolutely cracking poker player!
:face-approve:

[kevin wooldridge]

Sorry Vulpes mea culpa I think...the tender document speaks of standards for Historic Environment services (not HER)...I understood that to mean all forms of curatorial/development control works as well as HERs, but my previous post referred only to HER. I did mean to include Uncle Tom Cobbley and all in my broad brush stroke...

[vulpes]

Quite shocked Kevin you're to blame... standards slipping too?! :0

At least you didn't try and cover it up by making clearly erroneous statements.

In popular terminology, however, the two terms are used virtually interchangably.

No no no. HER stands for Historic Environment Record. It's not interchangeable with anything. What's this thread about? Anything?

[P Prentice]

Heard Enough Rubbish

[GnomeKing]

"it's the planner that makes the decision, and apparently a large proportion of them prefer a simple condition to an argument with a developer about why they should spend money undertaking work which might result in their not obtaining planning consent."

[RedEarth]

This certainly happens. Up here, most Councils now have online planning systems where all documentation relating to an application can be viewed online, and I imagine it's the same in England. I've found that in most cases that I've looked at, the Council archaeologist will have advised pre-determination evaluation as the preferred course, possibly saying that evaluation under a condition would be a less-acceptable alternative, but the planner decides to use the condition. When I asked a curator why they included the option of a condition when they would prefer pre-determination, I was told (off the record) that if a condition was not included and pre-determination evaluation is given as the only option, a lot of planners will simply grant the consent without any archaeological work taking place. You can argue that the curator should stick to his-or-her guns, and insist on pre-determination evaluation, but ultimately it's the planner that makes the decision, and apparently a large proportion of them prefer a simple condition to an arguement with a developer about why they should spend money undertaking work which might result in their not obtaining planning consent.

I feel this post may fall foul of RedEarth's proscription on preteniousness (and if it didn't before, that last sentance will have surely pushed it over the edge!)

Not at all, there was nothing pretentious in that entire post, as far I am concerned. This thread seems to have become quite interesting, which is nice.

The standard and understanding of archaeological conditions (pre determination or post) does seem to be massively varying and local authorities, who get the last say, seem to be able to ignore at will the advice of the county HES (not the same as HER), at least where things are set up in this manner and presumably that varies quite a lot nationally. The concern seems to be that county HES recommends x type of work to one local authority planner and they say, 'OK we'll make that a requirement', while another local planner just ignores it completely. This creates the odd situation where very similar types of work on similar sites have completely different conditions. If I were a developer I would find this very frustrating, or a handy means of getting a condition removed - 'you didn't ask for it on the virtually identical site just down the road'. As an archaeologist (whatever they are) it's worrying as it creates black holes in understanding of certain areas and biases in others and loss of archaeological/historic material/sites/information. PPS5 is all about understanding and significance is it not? If this sort of thing continues then surely that decision is already being made by a non-specialist local planner contrary to the advice of the specialist council officer. What about research aims? How can they be vaguely followed if this degree of random bias is being added to the data? If it was agreed that non archaeological work was ever to be required when a certain type of site was expected or identified - say medieval pottery kilns, archaeologically that would be a pretty bad thing to happen. When certain planners are routinely not putting archaeological conditions on developments that their colleagues in the same region are you get a similar (if not quite as drastic) problem. What was this topic about again? Oh yes, curatorial standards - fine, but forcing local planners to actually pay attention to what they say? Has anyone else come across this? Sorry, very long post.

[Marcus Brody]

No no no. HER stands for Historic Environment Record. It's not interchangeable with anything.

It's common enough 'round our way' to use HER to refer both to the Historic Environment Record as the database containing the information on the Historic Environment and to the people or organisation that works to maintain it. When someone talks of consulting the HER, it's likely that they will have looked at the records for the area, but also that they will have discussed the site with the staff of the HEAS, whose experience and knowledge is an integral part of any attempt to consult the HER, as many of them are in posession of detailed knowledge that may not have been specifically recorded in any individual site record, but which can be crucial when working in an area. As I said in my previous post, I'm well aware of the technical distinction between the two, and I didn't say that the use of these terms interchangably was correct, I simply said that it happens, in the same way that a vacuum cleaner is often still called a hoover even though it was manufactured by dyson. I also don't think that substituting historic environment advisory service for HER in any of the previous posts would make a substantive difference to how they were read or understood (apart from making them all slightly longer, and as someone who's already struggling under dual charges of verbosity and pretentiousness, I'm happy to avoid this).

I'd agree that this section of the thread doesn't appear to be about anything, or to have any real merit, so for the sake of a quiet life and the fact that I don't intend to spend much of a bank holiday weekend involved in pointless arguments on the internet, I'm happy to say that I completely agree with you, I recant all my previous statements and will head off forthwith to chastise myself for my egregious errors with a stiff beating with birch twigs (which, to be fair, is how I spend all my bank holidays anyway)