Sam Dargue.
Active — last recorded decision Dec 2025
A case officer at Hackney with an approval rate of 92% across 129 decided planning applications, spanning 21 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 Hackney reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Dargue's corpus (2024-era) is explicit about volume calculations exceeding GPDO permitted-development limits and treats that exceedance as not fatal for a full householder application, provided the design itself is judged acceptable — a distinct reasoning move from simply applying the GPDO test. His sustainability sections flag the ABSENCE of an energy statement as an assessment gap rather than assuming compliance.
· explicitly separates a scheme's GPDO volume exceedance from its acceptability as a full householder application, treating them as two different tests
· flags the absence of a submitted energy/sustainability statement as a stated assessment gap rather than assuming compliance by default
· distinguishes between retaining an existing single-family use (no NDSS assessment needed) and any future subdivision, marking the latter as requiring separate future permission
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a scheme's GPDO volume exceedance is fatal (it is not, for a full application) versus whether the design itself stands on its own merits
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: an explicit sustainability/energy statement — its absence is stated as a gap in the assessment rather than assumed compliant
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a proposal preserves single-family-dwelling status or risks pre-empting a future subdivision that would need its own permission
“The submitted volume calculations indicate that the rear dormer extension has a volume of 42.9 cubic metres, which exceeds the maximum permitted development limit of 40 cubic metres under Class B of the GDPO. As such, the proposal cannot be considered under permitted development rights. However, as this is a householder application, the volume exceedance does not preclude the granting of planning permission”
2024/0859
“no energy or sustainability statement has been provided to detail how the development meets these requirements. For instance, there is no information regarding measures to reduce carbon emissions”
2024/1004
“The bedroom in the lower ground floor will remain part of the single-family dwelling, and the separate entrance will simply provide independent access to the existing lower ground floor bedroom.”
2024/0926
Measured from 107 published Hackney 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 107 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 21 rows
Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2022–25.[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 Hackney planning register and published decision notices, 2022–25. · 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 Hackney 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 107 published Hackney 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.