21st January 2005, 10:24 AM
The sanction of units by monitors/ curators/ DC's(Development Control Officers) seems to be far more problematic than may be suggested here. I may have the wrong end of the stick here, after all I am but a ploppy!! but here goes...
As far as I am aware (and I may well be wrong) you cannot legaly (in England anyway) stop units working in an area if they are commisioned by a client. In theory the monitors should be able to ensure that they work to a standard but in practice this rarely seems to happen. I have heard DC's moaning about such and such a unit and its shoddy if not downright negligent behaviour over a long period of time but not one of them can actually do anything concrete about it. The only change that seems to come about is an increse in paperwork for every body (and I do understand about level playing fields but...) and the unit still continues with the bad practices. The problem seems to be that monitors have (generally) to answer to non-archaeologists who may not particularly care about the problem or see it as a minor inconvenience in a wider planning issues.
Only once (in 10 odd years) have I known a monitor try to remove a unit from a contractors list and after the unit complained they were forced to put them back on and the DC publicly appologise. When things like this happen it does not give the rest of us working in the field particular confidence in the monitoring process. While individual monitors may be trying their best for the archaeology it seems that the system onto which they are grafted (planning in most cases) works against them. As for the IFA it's claim to investigate unprofessional behaviour .......
As far as I am aware (and I may well be wrong) you cannot legaly (in England anyway) stop units working in an area if they are commisioned by a client. In theory the monitors should be able to ensure that they work to a standard but in practice this rarely seems to happen. I have heard DC's moaning about such and such a unit and its shoddy if not downright negligent behaviour over a long period of time but not one of them can actually do anything concrete about it. The only change that seems to come about is an increse in paperwork for every body (and I do understand about level playing fields but...) and the unit still continues with the bad practices. The problem seems to be that monitors have (generally) to answer to non-archaeologists who may not particularly care about the problem or see it as a minor inconvenience in a wider planning issues.
Only once (in 10 odd years) have I known a monitor try to remove a unit from a contractors list and after the unit complained they were forced to put them back on and the DC publicly appologise. When things like this happen it does not give the rest of us working in the field particular confidence in the monitoring process. While individual monitors may be trying their best for the archaeology it seems that the system onto which they are grafted (planning in most cases) works against them. As for the IFA it's claim to investigate unprofessional behaviour .......