Development Intent
AtlasRedbridgeOfficersThomas Smith Keary
Case officer · Redbridge Planning

Thomas Smith-Keary.

Active — last recorded decision May 2026

A case officer at Redbridge with an approval rate of 70% across 600 decided planning applications, spanning 22 wards.[1] Decision speed and appeal performance publish when decision notices are ingested.

Planning officer600 decisions70% approvalSave
Redbridge · 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 →
600
Applications
2020–26
Approval rate over time — tougher or softer 🔒Dashed line = London average
avg 81%61%202074%202182%202275%202363%202469%202564%2026
Approval-rate trend is subscriber dataSubscribe to see the trend →
What they decide — by application type
How they compareVersus peers
Approval rate70% · 25th of 32
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 reports233 officer reports parsed
16%
Approves despite concerns
of approvals record a documented reservation
12%
Negotiated approvals
approvals mentioning revisions/amendments
14%
"On balance" reports
reports using explicit balancing language
65%
Bespoke reasoning
of report text written for the case, not recited
What they write about — vs Redbridge's average officer

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

Daylight & sunlight
1.67× borough avg
Precedent & consistency
1.45× borough avg
Transport & parking
1.34× borough avg
Noise & disturbance
1.28× borough avg
Privacy & overlooking
1.03× borough avg

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

How they reason — coded from their reports

Smith-Keary's larger-scheme reports lead with the Housing Delivery Test figures and 'tilted balance' framing before design assessment, and his flat-conversion refusals identify a specific under-sized unit by exact square-metreage shortfall against the national space standard, distinguishing rooms mislabelled as studios from their true bedroom classification.

Observable habits

· opens larger residential scheme assessments with the Housing Delivery Test percentage and 'tilted balance'/presumption-in-favour framing

· corrects a unit's stated typology (e.g. a 'studio' with a separate bedroom reclassified as a 1-bed) before checking it against the correct space standard

· identifies the precise square-metre shortfall against the national space standard for each under-sized flat rather than a general accommodation-quality finding

What their reports consistently look for

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the current Housing Delivery Test percentage and tilted-balance consequence stated before scheme-specific assessment

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a unit's stated bedroom/studio typology is accurate before applying the relevant space standard

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the precise square-metre shortfall against the national described space standard for each affected unit

Assigned Thomas Smith-Keary 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

Please note that the Design and Access Statement refers to flats 1 and 2 as studio flats, this is incorrect as they both have bedrooms separate from the main habitable living room/kitchen

1258/20

the flat would still be 2 square metres below the minimum requirement of 37 square metres and would still be unacceptable; amending the floor area of the bedroom would not resolve the larger issue

1258/20

Measured from 233 published Redbridge 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 233 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.

LP26and LP27). This will enable a large
159 times cited
D3
146 times cited
LP23Cycle and Car Parking Standards
106 times cited
D12
106 times cited
D14
101 times cited
LP24Pollution). Encouraging a modal
93 times cited
LP22also sets out a number of public
87 times cited
T5
82 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
2944/25
Full Planning Permission
Approved
2026-06-08
0872/26
Full Planning Permission
Refused
2026-06-04
2944/25
Full Planning Permission
Approved
2026-06-08
0872/26
Full Planning Permission
Refused
2026-06-04
Full application history locked
Subscribe to see all 600 decisions →
Consultants approved most— subscriber data
1. Ken Judge & Associates Ltd
2. Consulting Ltd
3. SMART SKILLS LTD
4. ZAAVIA DESIGN LTD
At a glance
OfficerThomas Smith-Keary
BoroughRedbridge
RolePlanning officer
Experience
Applications600 (2020–26)
Approval rate70%
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 Redbridge 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 Redbridge 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 233 published Redbridge 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.