Richard Smith.
Last recorded decision Apr 2022 — no decisions in this record since
A case officer at Islington with an approval rate of 82% across 202 decided planning applications, spanning 17 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 Islington reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Smith's one refusal in this corpus is unusual in that the design and amenity sections both conclude favourably, and the refusal instead turns on unresolved inclusive-design and access issues flagged by the Council's Inclusive Design Officer. His other reports give close attention to a site's specific historical narrative (e.g. a churchyard's excavation and rebuilding history) before turning to design guidance.
· will recommend refusal on an access/inclusive-design ground even where the design and amenity sections themselves conclude no harm
· sets out a site's specific historical narrative and archival detail before applying design guidance
· reports the outcome of the 45-degree daylight/sunlight test explicitly before drawing an amenity conclusion
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether the Inclusive Design Officer's specific access concerns have been resolved, treated as a discrete consideration from general design/amenity acceptability
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: an explicit 45-degree daylight/sunlight test result stated before the amenity conclusion
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: conformity with the vernacular materials named in the site's specific Conservation Area Design Guidelines
“there are serious and unresolved inclusive design and transport issues with the access route serving the store. Strategies have been suggested to overcome these issues but no amendments have been received”
P2021/1976/FUL
“This application does not address nor resolve a specific access need”
P2021/1976/FUL
Measured from 65 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.
The policies this officer cites most in their own reports — times cited across 65 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 17 rows
Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2020–22.[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 Islington planning register and published decision notices, 2020–22. · 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 Islington 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 65 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.