Alistair Taylor.
Active — last recorded decision May 2026
A case officer at Westminster with an approval rate of 86% across 400 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 Westminster reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Taylor's caseload includes larger hotel/mixed-use listed-building schemes in Bayswater alongside more routine lightwell and shopfront work, and he is notably proactive about testing whether a proposal's practical characteristics (suite size, kitchen fit-out, sofa beds) might amount to a de facto use-class change even where the application states no change of use is sought — directly querying the applicant on this rather than taking the stated use at face value. He uses historic plan evidence (original drawings showing a lightwell's original open form) to justify reinstating a historic arrangement lost to later infill, and is thorough on multi-consultee highways/waste assessment even for straightforward schemes.
· tests whether a proposal's practical characteristics (room size, kitchen fit-out, furniture) might amount to a de facto use-class change even where the application states none is sought, and queries the applicant directly
· uses historic plan/drawing evidence to establish a feature's original form before assessing whether reinstating it is a design improvement
· records that the same case officer's prior involvement with earlier applications on the same site, plus submitted site photographs, provides sufficient evidence for a full assessment without a fresh site visit
· distinguishes recently-added, non-historic roof extensions ('a more recent addition') from original fabric when assessing whether their demolition and rebuilding removes anything of heritage value
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a scheme's practical characteristics suggest a de facto use-class change beyond what is formally applied for
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: historic plan/drawing evidence of a feature's original form before assessing a proposed reinstatement
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether a roof extension or added feature is itself a later, non-original addition before assessing the heritage impact of its removal
“officers noted that to the proposed plans some of the hotel suites appear especially large (76sqm, 68sqm, 55sqm etc. though the majority are smaller than this), contain sofa beds, have in some cases multiple bedrooms within a suite, and that they contain what appear on the plans as capable of being fully fitted kitchens”
20/00407/FULL
“Historic plans of the site clearly appear to indicate that the Star Street elevation originally had an open lightwell up to the corner entrance.”
20/00065/FULL
“The existing roof extension to fifth floor level is a more recent addition to the building, and its demolition and rebuilding will not therefore remove historic fabric.”
20/00407/FULL
Measured from 277 published Westminster 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 277 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 Westminster 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 Westminster 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 277 published Westminster 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.