David Gardener.
Active — last recorded decision May 2026
A case officer at Merton with an approval rate of 89% across 448 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 Merton reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Gardener's caseload is dominated by householder extensions and dormers, and his reports split cleanly into a 'Visual Amenity'/design paragraph and a separate 'Residential Amenity' paragraph for each affected neighbour, with an explicit acceptable/unacceptable verdict reached by comparing the extension's precise projection PAST the neighbour's own existing rear wall or extension. He has one of the higher refusal rates in this volume group, and his refusals are grounded in a specific measured overshoot beyond the neighbour's own established building line — a scheme is refused not for its absolute size but for projecting materially further than what that particular neighbour's own extension already establishes as the accepted precedent depth.
· measures a proposal's projection PAST each specific neighbour's own existing rear wall or extension (not the proposal's absolute depth) as the primary metric for a daylight/enclosure verdict
· separates 'Visual Amenity'/design acceptability from 'Residential Amenity' (neighbour impact) as two headed sub-paragraphs even in short householder reports
· on Certificate of Lawfulness refusals, states the single measured GPDO volume/threshold figure (e.g. '52.5cum which exceeds the 40cu m permitted development limit') as the sole determining fact
· the precise distance a proposed extension would project beyond each specific neighbour's own existing rear wall or extension
· the exact GPDO cubic-content figure for a roof extension measured against the 40/50m3 Class B threshold
· whether a previous refusal or appeal decision on the same site already established the accepted design parameters
“It is considered that the combined size of the existing and proposed extensions is excessive and would be visually intrusive and overbearing when viewed from No.4 Kirkley Road”
20/P0631
“52.5cum which exceeds the 40cu m permitted development limit for a roof extension to a terrace house”
20/P1212
Measured from 350 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 350 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 Merton 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 — 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 350 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.