Fergus Freeney.
Active — last recorded decision May 2026
A case officer at Harrow with an approval rate of 68% across 367 decided planning applications, spanning 17 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 Harrow reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Freeney's refusals frequently isolate a single design element as the reason for refusal while explicitly stating other design/amenity aspects were acceptable, distinguishing his approach from wholesale-refusal reasoning; he pays close, quantified attention to noise impact from mechanical plant (air conditioning/heat pump units), requiring bespoke noise impact assessments where multiple units are combined. His Green Belt reports name the specific NPPF paragraph test alongside the exact percentage floor-area increase from the original building.
· isolates a single design element (e.g. plant equipment visibility, roof pitch alteration) as the sole reason for refusal while explicitly stating other aspects of the same scheme are acceptable
· requires a bespoke, cumulative noise impact assessment where multiple items of mechanical plant (A/C units plus air source heat pumps) are proposed together, rather than accepting a single-unit MCS calculation
· cites the exact percentage floor-area/volume increase from the ORIGINAL building (not just the existing) when assessing Green Belt proportionality
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a cumulative, bespoke noise impact assessment covers ALL proposed mechanical plant units together, not just a single-unit manufacturer calculation
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the percentage floor-area or volume increase measured against the ORIGINAL building on Green Belt sites, not only the existing one
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether roof dormers achieve 'visual containment' per the specific SPD paragraph reference before accepting scale
“a bespoke, full Noise Impact Assessment would be required in order to assess the cumulative impact on neighbouring residential amenity from all the proposed units”
PL/0431/23
“It is noted that this is a substantial increase in the floor area above that of the original and existing”
PL/0608/23
Measured from 29 published Harrow 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 29 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 17 rows
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.
- [1]Applications decided, approval rate, per-year trend and ward breakdown — London Borough of Harrow planning register and published decision notices, 2020–26. · 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 — mean effective conditions attached to Harrow 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 29 published Harrow 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.