A taste of things to come

[BAJR]

This article jumped out at me as a prime example of the potential future. where councils don't really have the advice from a planning archaeologist and it takes tip offs to mobilise English Heritage to complain about a carpark to be built on a medieval manor site..


Have a read>>
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wf...park_plan/

this area is covered by
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/profe...y-service/

But what I don't get is why it is up to the councils to consult... rather than every application scrutinised.

If it is up to a council with no embedded archaeology advice. guess how many consultations will come

Well caught though

[ken_whittaker]

David

I would not confuse the GLAAS service to London LPAs in London with the austerity cutbacks affecting archaeological advisory services across the UK. GLAAS has been the recognised advisor to 31 London Boroughs since 1992, including Waltham Forest. The case you highlight is simply an example of oversight, where the planners have not directly sought the views of GLAAS on this occassion, it in not an example of EH having to step in to cover for a service that has been cut.

[BAJR]

I thank you.

I think what I was trying to say was that it should not really be up to the planners to ask advice... it should be an embedded service that provides advice. The difference is in the knowledge needed to decide. and without it, this would be a taste of things to come.

Perhaps I am confused indeed about the way GLAAS works. do they not scrutinise the planning lists? or do they wait to get asked to comment by a planner who may not ask for comments in some cases, even though an archaeological advisor would. ( trying saying that in one breath)

[Unitof1]

Seems to me to be exactly how it should work. A resident at the/an appropriate point in the/a planning procedure complained/objected to the scheme/procedure that archaeology should have been considered in the planning application by the developer and they hadn?t. Back to developer to find an archaeologist (little old lady specialist) to concoct a consideration.

If I had any thoughts on the matter is that English Heritage, which said the council had not told it about the plans and it was only made aware because of a tip-off by a resident is talking gibberish in making out that it needed to be consulted at what point in the procedure.

Go and read the PPSs it says the developer should present evidence concerning the archaeology with the application. Whats probably more to the point is that the councils planning application forms probably don?t prompt the developer for any archaeological consideration.

[Winders]

It's a difficult situation really for both sides (speaking as someone who's been both a development control planner and an archaeological advisor). Unless the local plan has areas of special archaeological interest or SAMs marked and acting as an alert, your average development control planner is unlikely to think about archaeology when they're initially assessing an application to decide who to consult, whether their archaeological advisors are in-house or located elsewhere. On the other hand, the shear numbers of planning applications made (especially across a whole county- I had 9 planning authorities to monitor) makes it hard for archaeological advisors to catch every application. Most weekly reports provided to interested bodies by LPAs tend to be simple lists of addresses, so it's not as simple as running a check using GIS methods.

It's my understanding that GLAAS act as the archaeological advisors for most of London, and look after London's HER.

Education of development control planners helps (most will be interested as it helps to build their CPD logs for the RTPI) while good relationships between county archaeological advisors and building conservation officers in districts and boroughs (your eyes on the ground) can catch applications that otherwise would get away.

[Martin Locock]

Although Winders proposes some workarounds to what sounds like an inherently inefficient system, it might be better to ensure that all applications are screened for archaeology by an advisor using GIS-converted weekly lists.

[Winders]

You have to remember that the same problem affects bio-diversity, environmental health, highways management and all the other consultees out there- it's not just an exclusively archaeological issue with DC. If only the weekly lists were produced as a shapefile...

[Unitof1]

but bio-diversity, environmental health, highways management and all the other consultees out there will have a prompt on the planning application form so that the developer and their agents wont forget to submit their considerations.

[tmsarch]

Many, if not all, of the LPAs in the county that I work do include an archaeological prompt as part of the application forms - this isn't on the 1APP form but on the local validation tick-sheet requirements that have to accompany any planning application. The majority of the council's have some form of on-line guidance as to what archaeological information is required under the local validation requirements (although as I have mentioned before on the forum - there is an issue of 'quality' when it comes to the validation of submitted information).

I've just checked our stats for 2011 (a relitively quite year for us) and apparently we logged (i.e. provided advice on) 835 planning applications last year between the two DC officers. This naturally only forms a small percentage of the total planning applications submitted across the county (sorry don't have these stats to hand). With the resources we have we cannot look at every simgle planning application submitted. Our approach is to use a screening trigger mechanism that prompts when the LPA should contact us. This involves being consulted on all applications over a certain size threshold and in addition we supply all of our LPAs with a GIS layer for areas of potential/interest whereby any application (regardless of size) that falls within that area triggers a consultation. In some places these areas are focussed on historic settlements/PAS or find hotspots/areas where previous discoveries are made - whilst in other high potential areas the GIS layer provides uniform widescale coverage to ensure we capture everything.

We do try to check through local-lists where possible within our workload, but generally find that the GIS consultation trigger works well for us and the LPAs are happy to use it and we rarely have any problems about not being consulted on a planning application. That is not to say that if an application falls outside of one of our GIS trigger layers we cannot pick it up from local planning lists and provide advice.

PS Unit - I won't go off and read PPS 5 as you suggest - you have you're own 'unique' interpretation on how that document is applied, thankfully no-one else - be it developer, planner or archaeologist (pension grabbing or otherwise) - seem to agree with your interpretation. In any event you may not have heard, but the PPS have now been entirely replced by the NPPF.

[Unitof1]

had a look at the walthanstow on line planning guidance
http://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/pages/services/planning-applications-residential.aspx

no mention of archaeology
tried the link to national validation lists
Nationalrequirement lists, which came into effect on 6 April 2008

No mention of archaeology

Looked at the Walthamstow local guidance

http://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/Documents/lbwf-location-validation-requirements-apl08.pdf

I would not say it very obvious, seems to be buried in something called a heritage statement which might be required in certain circumstances.

Heres another

Is this the type of on line validation information you mean http://www.canterbury.gov.uk/main.cfm?objectid=1611

Tsmarh Is the online archaeology validation process guidence any the better in your area?