John Grierson.
Recently active — last recorded decision Nov 2024
A case officer at Sutton with an approval rate of 69% across 627 decided planning applications, spanning 24 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 Sutton reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Grierson's caseload includes a higher share of heritage-sensitive and Metropolitan Open Land/Green Belt cases than the other volume officers, and his reports weigh a scheme's individual design elements separately before reaching an 'on balance' overall verdict — a two storey side extension judged acceptable 'when considered on its own' can still be refused once considered 'in tandem with' an excessively deep rear extension, treating cumulative massing as the determinative test rather than each element in isolation. He is comparatively willing to refuse on tree-related grounds where the Council's own Principal Tree Officer disputes an applicant's arboricultural report ('does not agree with the findings and recommendations of the submitted arboricultural report, which fails to meet BS5837 standards'), rather than deferring to the applicant's own technical evidence.
· assesses each element of a composite scheme (e.g. side extension, rear extension) separately for acceptability 'on its own', then re-tests the combination 'in tandem' before the final verdict, rather than reaching one verdict on the whole scheme at once
· on Green Belt/Metropolitan Open Land sites, applies the specific volume-increase percentage test (e.g. the 30% external volume threshold) rather than a general openness/character judgement
· gives explicit weight to a disagreement between the Council's own Principal Tree Officer and the applicant's submitted arboricultural report, favouring the in-house assessment where BS5837 standards are not met
· whether a composite scheme's design elements remain acceptable when assessed together ('in tandem'), not just individually
· the specific Green Belt/MOL volume-increase percentage a proposal represents against the original building or structure
· whether the applicant's arboricultural report meets BS5837 standards where the Council's own Tree Officer has raised a substantive disagreement
“when considered in tandem with the excessively deep and unsympathetic single storey rear extension, the proposed extensions would result in the addition of a large incongruous form”
DM2022/00284
“does not agree with the findings and recommendations of the submitted arboricultural report, which fails to meet BS5837 standards or provide an accurate representation of the development impacts upon the adjacent street trees”
DM2022/00403
Measured from 754 published Sutton 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 754 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
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Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2021–24.[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 Sutton planning register and published decision notices, 2021–24. · 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 Sutton 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 754 published Sutton 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.