Stephen Hill.
Active — last recorded decision May 2026
A case officer at Merton with an approval rate of 93% across 445 decided planning applications, spanning 15 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 Merton reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Hill's caseload spans larger residential intensification schemes and routine householder extensions, and on the bigger schemes he cites the full closed policy-code list (London Plan/Core Strategy/Sites and Policies Plan) at the head of the Policy Context section before working through it systematically topic by topic. His refusals concentrate on cases where an extension's depth (measured in metres to two decimal places) would be visually dominant toward a SPECIFIC adjoining property whose own orientation (e.g. due south) compounds a sunlight/daylight loss, and he distinguishes this from cases where the same scale of extension would be acceptable toward a differently-oriented neighbour.
· recites the full closed set of applicable policy codes (London Plan/Core Strategy/SPP) as an explicit list at the head of the Policy Context section before the narrative assessment begins
· on amenity refusals, explicitly factors in the AFFECTED neighbour's specific orientation (e.g. 'due south of number 5') as compounding or mitigating a sunlight/daylight impact, rather than treating all neighbours identically
· on precedent-based roof-height cases, cites a specific appeal decision (by application reference and address) that already settled the acceptability of the same ridge-height increase along the same road
· the affected neighbour's specific orientation relative to the proposal (e.g. due south) as a factor in sunlight/daylight impact
· whether a specific prior appeal decision on the same road already settled the acceptability of a comparable design feature
· whether the site's small-sites/housing-delivery context (London Plan Policy H2) supports the principle of intensification
“It is noted that the subject property is due south of number 5 and the impact on sunlight and daylight will consequently be severe”
22/P1593
“The question of the acceptability of the raised roof height was settled insofar as current policy is concerned in an appeal from Planning Decision 17/P1352 at 3 Kingswood Road”
22/P1630
Measured from 181 published Merton 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 181 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 15 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 Merton 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 — Merton's decision-notice parsing is limited coverage, so no borough or officer figure is shown.
- [4]"How this officer decides", the policy playbook and all quotes — parsed from 181 published Merton 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.