Zara Raza.
Active — last recorded decision May 2026
A case officer at Waltham Forest with an approval rate of 82% across 451 decided planning applications, spanning 13 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 Waltham Forest reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Raza's caseload is dominated by GPDO Class B roof-dormer permitted-development checklists and HMO/Sui Generis use-class disputes, and her reasoning is distinctive for treating the underlying use-class question (whether a property is genuinely a single household under C3(c) versus an unregistered large HMO under Sui Generis) as a threshold fact-finding exercise before any planning-merits assessment begins, cross-checking submitted floorplans against her own site-visit observations and flagging discrepancies between the two rather than accepting either at face value. On full applications she runs the space-standards and neighbouring-amenity assessment methodically against the Waltham Forest Local Plan's own numbered policies (53, 56, 57), and on HMO Certificate-of-Lawfulness cases she applies a similarly forensic evidence-gap approach, building a tenant-by-tenant occupancy table from submitted documents and explicitly naming the gaps in the evidential chain rather than giving the applicant the benefit of the doubt.
· on HMO/Sui Generis use-class disputes, verifies the submitted floorplan's bedroom count against her own site-visit observation before accepting the applicant's stated use class
· on Certificate of Lawfulness (HMO) applications, builds a tenant/room occupancy table from the submitted evidence and explicitly identifies the date gaps that break continuous-use, rather than assuming continuity
· on full applications with multiple flats, runs the Local Plan's own numbered space-standard policies (53, 56, 57) unit-by-unit in a comparison table before reaching a conclusion on residential amenity
· whether the submitted plans' room count and layout match what officers actually observed on a site visit, before accepting the stated use class
· whether the tenancy/occupancy evidence submitted for a Certificate of Lawfulness covers the full required period without unexplained gaps
· whether each proposed unit's GIA, bedroom sizes and external amenity space meet the Local Plan's own numbered space-standard policies
“The layout of the property is consistent with a HMO use under sui generis class as there are more than six bedrooms”
230693
“the proposed development, given the design, layout, scale and materials of the proposed additions to the site, they would be acceptable within the existing urban form”
232940
“It is clear that there are gaps in the occupancy of the building during this time from 2014”
232730
Measured from 142 published Waltham Forest 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 142 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 13 rows
Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2022–26.[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 Waltham Forest planning register and published decision notices, 2022–26. · 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 Waltham Forest 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 142 published Waltham Forest 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.