Development Intent
AtlasBarnetOfficersKate Foster
Case officer · Barnet Planning

Kate Foster.

Active — last recorded decision May 2026

A case officer at Barnet with an approval rate of 84% across 231 decided planning applications, spanning 23 wards.[1] Decision speed and appeal performance publish when decision notices are ingested.

Planning officer231 decisions84% approvalSave
Barnet · 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 →
231
Applications
2022–26
Approval rate over time — tougher or softer 🔒Dashed line = London average
avg 81%100%202281%202392%202481%202575%2026
Approval-rate trend is subscriber dataSubscribe to see the trend →
What they decide — by application type
How they compareVersus peers
Approval rate84% · 32nd of 85
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 reports156 officer reports parsed
Approves despite concerns
of approvals record a documented reservation
Negotiated approvals
approvals mentioning revisions/amendments
5%
"On balance" reports
reports using explicit balancing language
48%
Bespoke reasoning
of report text written for the case, not recited
What they write about — vs Barnet's average officer

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

Privacy & overlooking
1.47× borough avg
Trees & landscape
1.19× borough avg
Character & heritage
1.18× borough avg
Materials & detailing
1.16× borough avg
Daylight & sunlight
1.14× borough avg

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

How they reason — coded from their reports

Foster's caseload includes a significant share of commercial/mixed-use reports (medical centres, shop units) alongside standard householder work, and she is notably diligent about tracking a site's full enforcement history by reference number and closure date before assessing a live application, rather than summarising it in passing. Her equality-and-access reasoning is also more substantive than most colleagues': she directly checks a stated accessibility justification against what the submitted plans actually show, rather than accepting the applicant's framing.

Observable habits

· tracks a site's enforcement history by exact reference number, nature of breach, and closure date before assessing the live application

· checks a stated accessibility/equalities justification directly against what the submitted plans show, flagging contradictions (e.g. a 'wheelchair access' porch shown with steps)

· treats amendments made mid-application to correct plan inaccuracies as a distinct assessment step, confirming the corrected version before proceeding

What their reports consistently look for

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the site's full enforcement case history by reference number and closure date, not just a general mention of past breaches

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a stated accessibility justification (e.g. wheelchair access) is actually shown as achievable on the submitted plans

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: confirmation that plan inaccuracies flagged during the application were genuinely corrected in the final amended set before assessment proceeds

Assigned Kate Foster 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 previous enforcement investigations (ENF/01384/17, ENF/00034/18) found the former use of the outbuilding to be ancillary to the C3 use of the dwellinghouse

23/0443/191

Officers are satisfied that the proposal represents an accurate representation of the site, therefore for the purposes of assessing this application, the information is deemed to be accurate

23/0360/FUL

Measured from 156 published Barnet 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 156 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.

CS1 arnet’s place shaping strategy – protection,
91 times cited
CS5 rotecting and enhancing Barnet’s character
88 times cited
CS NPPF
86 times cited
CS15Delivering the Core Strategy
26 times cited
DM01Protecting Barnet’s character and amenity Page
21 times cited
DM02Development standards Page
12 times cited
CS9Enlargement of School Facilities CS10 DM
11 times cited
DM04Environmental Considerations for
3 times cited
Which policies this officer leans on is subscriber intelligenceSubscribe to unlock →
Decisions by ward

Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2022–26.[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
26/2010/HSE
Householder Application
2026-05-29
26/0936/HSE
Householder Application
Approved
2026-05-28
26/2010/HSE
Householder Application
2026-05-29
26/0936/HSE
Householder Application
Approved
2026-05-28
Full application history locked
Subscribe to see all 231 decisions →
Consultants approved most— subscriber data
1. Capital Property & Construction Consultants Ltd
2. Great Plans
3. Iguana Architects
4. Scott & Sampson Architects
At a glance
OfficerKate Foster
BoroughBarnet
RolePlanning officer
Experience
Applications231 (2022–26)
Approval rate84%
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 Barnet planning register and published decision notices, 2022–26. · 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 Barnet 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 156 published Barnet 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.