Samuel Hepworth.
Active — last recorded decision May 2026
A case officer at Southwark with an approval rate of 88% across 482 decided planning applications, spanning 23 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 Southwark reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Hepworth's amenity reasoning leans heavily on 'on balance' judgements once mitigating factors are weighed — mutual overlooking already existing between neighbours, or a scheme's design falling short of an SPD requirement but not to a refusal-worthy degree. On larger schemes he moves into named CIL rate calculations and prior-refusal history for the same site, cross-referencing specific unit sizes against the Residential Design Standards SPD.
· weighs amenity impact 'on balance' against an existing condition (e.g. already-mutual overlooking between gardens) rather than assessing the proposal in isolation
· flags where a design falls short of a numeric SPD standard (minimum room area, amenity space) but judges it not refusal-worthy given context
· on larger schemes, states the exact CIL rate per square metre and the CIL zone the site sits in
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether neighbours already have mutual overlooking before treating a new window as harmful
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: comparison of the proposed room/unit sizes against the Residential Design Standards SPD and Nationally Described Space Standards minimums
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the specific CIL zone and rate applicable to the site on larger schemes
“it is not considered that the proposed would result in a detrimental impact on the amenity by overlooking on the adjacent properties as there is already mutual overlooking of gardens between neighbours”
20/AP/0170
“the 3-bedroom units proposed have been proposed with less than 10sqm, and the most of the 2-bedroom units have none, with no communal amenity space on site to make up for this shortfall”
20/AP/0303
Measured from 424 published Southwark 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 424 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 23 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 Southwark 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 Southwark 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 424 published Southwark 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.