Development Intent
AtlasIslingtonOfficersJake Shiels
Case officer · Islington Planning

Jake Shiels.

Active — last recorded decision Mar 2026

A case officer at Islington with an approval rate of 78% across 395 decided planning applications, spanning 17 wards.[1] Decision speed and appeal performance publish when decision notices are ingested.

Planning officer395 decisions78% approvalSave
Islington · ward map
Approval rate — by ward
Lower ~68%
Higher ~90%
ShowingAll years · subscriber →across all years on record — a period re-scopes the headline figures and the trend
At a glanceEach metric links to the investigation behind it
All investigations →
395
Applications
2020–26
Approval rate over time — tougher or softer 🔒Dashed line = London average
avg 81%74%202086%202172%202284%202379%2024100%2025100%2026
Approval-rate trend is subscriber dataSubscribe to see the trend →
What they decide — by application type
How they compareVersus peers
Approval rate78% · 45th of 55
higher is betterdashed = London avg
Decision time · publishes with decision notices
in development
Appeal overturn · publishes with decision notices
in development
How this officer decides — from their own reports216 officer reports parsed
14%
Approves despite concerns
of approvals record a documented reservation
17%
Negotiated approvals
approvals mentioning revisions/amendments
2%
"On balance" reports
reports using explicit balancing language
73%
Bespoke reasoning
of report text written for the case, not recited
What they write about — vs Islington's average officer

Topic mentions per 1,000 words of their own report text (boilerplate stripped), indexed against all parsed Islington reports. Attention, not stance.

Precedent & consistency
1.42× borough avg
Character & heritage
1.3× borough avg
Materials & detailing
0.95× borough avg
Noise & disturbance
0.93× borough avg
Bulk & massing
0.87× borough avg

Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.

How they reason — coded from their reports

Shiels handles larger and more complex casework in this corpus (a listed prison gatehouse, tall office buildings, protected strategic views) and writes long-form heritage-significance narratives establishing a building's history before assessing the proposal. Two related refusals on Colebrooke Row reuse near-identical significance paragraphs, then diverge into distinct, specific objections to each element proposed.

Observable habits

· sets out a building's detailed construction and alteration history (architects, dates, subsequent changes) before assessing the current proposal

· checks proposals against protected view corridors (e.g. Mayor's Protected Vista) as a distinct, separate consideration

· on paired/related applications for the same building, reuses the same significance assessment verbatim and then gives each a distinct, specific reason for objection

What their reports consistently look for

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a heritage asset's history and prior alterations are documented before judging further change

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a property is named on a conservation area's specific schedule of buildings permitted roof extensions

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a proposal is checked against protected view corridors, not just the immediate streetscene

Assigned Jake Shiels on a live case?What they pay attention to, how they reason, and what their reports consistently look for — so you can address it before they raise it.Subscribe to unlock →
In their own words

The application property is not within Schedule 3.2 of the CADG which would allow for a traditional roof extension and therefore the proposal is contrary to the CADG guidance

P2021/3126/FUL & P2021/3159/LBC

The site falls within the Mayor's Protected Vista from Parliament Hill summit to St Paul's Cathedral and Kenwood viewing gazebo to St Paul's Cathedral

P2021/1775/FUL

Measured from 216 published Islington 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.

Policy playbook — what this officer cites[3]

The policies this officer cites most in their own reports — times cited across 216 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.

D4Designing in Context
162 times cited
CS8
146 times cited
DM2.1
141 times cited
D3
128 times cited
CS9
94 times cited
DM2.3
87 times cited
HC1
87 times cited
PLAN1Site appraisal, design principles and process
46 times cited
Which policies this officer leans on is subscriber intelligenceSubscribe to unlock →
Decisions by ward

Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2020–26.[1] Click the map above to focus this page on a ward, or a row to open the ward.

Recent applications
Address
Reference
Type
Outcome
Date
P2022/3600/FUL
Full Planning (Householder)
Approved
2026-01-19
P2022/3646/LBC
Listed Building
Approved
2026-01-19
P2022/3600/FUL
Full Planning (Householder)
Approved
2026-01-19
P2022/3646/LBC
Listed Building
Approved
2026-01-19
Full application history locked
Subscribe to see all 395 decisions →
Consultants approved most— subscriber data
1. RPS Group
2. Chris Dyson Architects LLP
3. Origin Architecture Ltd.
4. design-london ltd
At a glance
OfficerJake Shiels
BoroughIslington
RolePlanning officer
Experience
Applications395 (2020–26)
Approval rate78%
London approval avg81%
Who decides here
GovernmentMayor of LondonCouncilCommitteeOfficersDecisionsApplicantsInspectorate
Related investigations
When committees overrule officers like this one →
How often members depart from officer recommendations, and how those overrides fare at appeal.
How much gets decided without a committee →
The delegated share by borough and officer — where the real power over decisions sits.
Sources & method
  1. [1]Applications decided, approval rate, per-year trend and ward breakdown — London Borough of Islington planning register and published decision notices, 2020–26. · methodology
  2. [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. [3]Condition load — mean effective conditions attached to Islington decision notices (grant/split), parsed from the published notice text; a borough figure, not yet split per case officer.
  4. [4]"How this officer decides", the policy playbook and all quotes — parsed from 216 published Islington 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.
Methodology is published in full so every number is traceable to its primary source.