Thomas Wong.
Active — last recorded decision May 2026
A case officer at Barnet with an approval rate of 80% across 432 decided planning applications, spanning 24 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×.
Wong's reports lean on a distinctive 'fallback position' argument — treating an unimplemented but genuinely extant prior approval or lawful development certificate on the SAME site as a material consideration even when it hasn't been built, rather than assessing the current scheme in isolation. He is also willing to refuse purely on highways grounds ('the proposed development has raised safety issue in highways perspective') even where the character and amenity assessment is otherwise favourable, keeping the two tests genuinely independent rather than blending them into one verdict.
· treats an unimplemented but extant prior approval/certificate on the same site as a genuine 'fallback position' material consideration, not merely background history
· keeps the highways/parking test fully independent of the character/amenity verdict, willing to refuse on highways grounds alone even where character is otherwise acceptable
· cites the specific hardstanding depth shortfall against the Domestic Crossover Policy's standard car dimensions (2.4m x 4.8m) as the refusal trigger
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether an unimplemented prior approval on the same site is genuinely likely to be built, before treating it as a material fallback consideration
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the exact hardstanding depth against the Domestic Crossover Policy's standard car dimensions, run as its own pass/fail test
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether neighbouring hip-to-gable extensions were built under genuine permitted development rights (not planning permission) before citing them as an equivalent fallback
“Although the two extensions approved under prior approval 20/1577/PNH have not yet been implemented, it is considered that the configuration of the Prior Approval extensions are such that there is a material likelihood of them otherwise being implemented”
23/0116/HSE
“the proposed development has raised safety issue in highways perspective. Therefore, this application is recommended for REFUSAL”
23/0081/HSE
Measured from 169 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 169 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 24 rows
Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2021–26.[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, 2021–26. · 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 169 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.