John Sperling.
Recently active — last recorded decision Jan 2025
A case officer at Barnet with an approval rate of 71% across 461 decided planning applications, spanning 27 wards.[1] Decision speed and appeal performance publish when decision notices are ingested.
Topic mentions per 1,000 words of their own report text (boilerplate stripped), indexed against all parsed Barnet reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Sperling's caseload includes a notable share of flat-conversion and estate-regeneration (Grahame Park) applications, and he is one of the few Barnet officers to consistently invoke Policy DM01's ban on 'loss of houses in roads characterised by houses' as the PRINCIPLE objection to conversions, testing it before reaching the design/amenity assessment at all. He also quotes highways officer comments on PTAL rating and parking-space arithmetic in full rather than summarising them.
· tests conversion-to-flats applications against Policy DM01's 'loss of houses in roads characterised by houses' PRINCIPLE first, before any design/amenity assessment
· quotes the highways officer's PTAL rating and parking-space arithmetic in full, including the exact bus routes and walking times cited
· distinguishes an unauthorised existing flat conversion on a comparable site (confirmed only via Council Tax records) from a proper material consideration, refusing to treat it as a precedent
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a road is genuinely 'characterised by houses' under DM01 before any design assessment of a proposed flat conversion begins
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the highways officer's own PTAL rating and exact parking-space arithmetic, quoted rather than paraphrased
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a cited comparable flat conversion on the same road is itself lawfully permitted, rejecting unauthorised examples confirmed only by Council Tax records as precedent
“the 'conversion of dwellings into flats in roads characterised by houses will not normally be appropriate'”
20/0849/FUL
“No.1 Southfields is currently used as a flatted development, however it does not benefit from planning permission and therefore is not a material consideration”
20/0849/FUL
Measured from 143 published Barnet officer reports written by this officer, with recited policy boilerplate stripped before any counting. These describe how this officer works and writes — they are not outcome predictions. Every quote is from a named public report.
The policies this officer cites most in their own reports — times cited across 143 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 27 rows
Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2020–25.[1] Click the map above to focus this page on a ward, or a row to open the ward.
- [1]Applications decided, approval rate, per-year trend and ward breakdown — London Borough of Barnet planning register and published decision notices, 2020–25. · methodology
- [2]Appeal overturn and decision-time benchmarks — Planning Inspectorate (PINS) appeal decisions and application date pairs; not yet computed per officer, shown as a dash until they are. · PINS appeals casework
- [3]Condition load — mean effective conditions attached to Barnet decision notices (grant/split), parsed from the published notice text; a borough figure, not yet split per case officer.
- [4]"How this officer decides", the policy playbook and all quotes — parsed from 143 published Barnet officer reports written by this officer, recited policy boilerplate stripped before counting; disposition text coded from their own reasoning with every quote machine-verified verbatim. Descriptive of how they work — not outcome predictions.