Karen Coles.
Recently active — last recorded decision May 2025
A case officer at Kingston Upon Thames with an approval rate of 72% across 161 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 Kingston Upon Thames reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Coles' caseload combines Permission in Principle applications and statutory Certificate of Lawful Development cases, and she is distinctive for explaining the two-stage Permission in Principle process itself (principle stage then technical-details stage) before applying it, rather than assuming familiarity, and for reciting the exact statutory text of Sections 191/171B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 verbatim in Certificate of Lawfulness assessments before applying it to the facts. On major residential schemes she engages directly with evolving London Plan density/optimisation policy (citing both the adopted and then-emerging Draft London Plan Policy D3), tracking policy transitions explicitly rather than citing only the final adopted version.
· explains the two-stage Permission in Principle process (principle stage, then technical-details consent stage) explicitly before applying it to a specific application
· recites the exact statutory text of Sections 191/171B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 verbatim before applying it to the facts of a Certificate of Lawfulness case
· tracks London Plan density/optimisation policy through its transitional (adopted vs. then-emerging Draft) states explicitly, rather than citing only the final adopted policy
· whether an application properly falls within the Permission in Principle route's limited scope (location, land use type, amount of development only)
· verbatim statutory compliance with Sections 191(2)/171B TCPA 1990's lawfulness/time-limit tests
· whether a major scheme's density and unit mix align with London Plan Policy D3/Table 3.2 density-range guidance, tracked across policy versions
“the first stage (or permission in principle stage) establishes whether a site is suitable in-principle and the second (`technical details consent') stage is when the detailed development proposals are assessed”
20/00349/PIP
“S.191 (2) states that "For the purposes of this Act uses and operations are lawful at any time if-- (a) no enforcement action may then be taken in respect of them”
20/00627/CEU
Measured from 54 published Kingston Upon Thames 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 54 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
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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 Kingston Upon Thames 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 Kingston Upon Thames 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 54 published Kingston Upon Thames 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.