Development Intent
AtlasWestminsterOfficersAvani Raven
Case officer · Westminster Planning

Avani Raven.

Active — last recorded decision Mar 2026

A case officer at Westminster with an approval rate of 64% across 392 decided planning applications, spanning 13 wards.[1] Decision speed and appeal performance publish when decision notices are ingested.

Planning officer392 decisions64% approvalSave
Westminster · 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 →
392
Applications
2020–26
Approval rate over time — tougher or softer 🔒Dashed line = London average
avg 81%71%202068%202159%202264%202362%202459%202572%2026
Approval-rate trend is subscriber dataSubscribe to see the trend →
What they decide — by application type
How they compareVersus peers
Approval rate64% · 75th of 76
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 reports314 officer reports parsed
25%
Approves despite concerns
of approvals record a documented reservation
45%
Negotiated approvals
approvals mentioning revisions/amendments
8%
"On balance" reports
reports using explicit balancing language
82%
Bespoke reasoning
of report text written for the case, not recited
What they write about — vs Westminster's average officer

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

Trees & landscape
2.91× borough avg
Flooding & drainage
2.39× borough avg
Bulk & massing
1.58× borough avg
Privacy & overlooking
1.53× borough avg
Precedent & consistency
1.42× borough avg

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

How they reason — coded from their reports

Raven's caseload has the highest refusal share seen among the top officers in this corpus (roughly a third of reports read), driven substantially by telecoms mast/antenna prior-approval cases in Maida Vale, where she is willing to refuse based on harm to a building's roofscape even when the building itself is unlisted and outside a conservation area, reasoning instead from the building's contribution to protected townscape views from public vantage points nearby. She is procedurally exacting on prior-approval timing (checking submitted evidence dates against statutory determination deadlines) and, on CLEUD work, records a personal officer site visit as corroborating evidence rather than relying on documents alone. On repeat/renewal applications she carefully distinguishes what has changed from the earlier approved scheme (e.g. an added Site Investigation Report) even when recommending approval of an identical proposal.

Observable habits

· assesses harm to an unlisted building's roofscape via its contribution to protected TOWNSCAPE VIEWS from public vantage points, even where the building itself sits outside a conservation area

· checks submitted evidence dates (proof of delivery, compliance declarations) against statutory prior-approval determination deadlines for internal consistency

· on CLEUD applications, records a personal officer site visit and states whether the physical layout matches the submitted drawings, rather than relying on documentary evidence alone

· on repeat/renewal applications for an identical scheme, itemises precisely what additional evidence has been added since the earlier approval rather than treating it as unchanged

What their reports consistently look for

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: a building's contribution to protected townscape views from a nearby public vantage point, independent of its own listed/conservation-area status

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: internal date-consistency across an applicant's submitted prior-approval evidence against the statutory determination clock

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: a personal officer site visit corroborating (or not) the submitted drawings on CLEUD applications

Assigned Avani Raven 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

Whilst the building is not in a conservation area, the building and its largely clutter free roofscape is directly seen in townscape views that are within the conservation area and contributes to the visual amenity, character and appearance of the Maida Vale Conservation Area.

20/00469/TELCOM

An Officer visited the property on 11 March 2020. The layout of the premises was consistent with the submitted drawing submitted as Appendix 2 in support of this application

20/00501/CLEUD

There is also an additional Site Investigation Report which has been included with the current application which has not previously been submitted.

20/01178/FULL

Measured from 314 published Westminster 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 314 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.

S29
11 times cited
D6
9 times cited
DES 1
8 times cited
DES 5
8 times cited
DES 9
7 times cited
S28
6 times cited
ENV 13
6 times cited
DES 6
5 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
25/08680/FULL
Full Planning Permission Application
Approved
2026-04-30
25/08946/FULL
Full Planning Permission Application
Refused
2026-04-29
25/08680/FULL
Full Planning Permission Application
Approved
2026-04-30
25/08946/FULL
Full Planning Permission Application
Refused
2026-04-29
Full application history locked
Subscribe to see all 392 decisions →
Consultants approved most— subscriber data
1. Savills
2. Avenues
3. Firstplan
4. Emrys Architects
At a glance
OfficerAvani Raven
RolePlanning officer
Experience
Applications392 (2020–26)
Approval rate64%
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 Westminster 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 Westminster 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 314 published Westminster 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.