Development Intent
AtlasWestminsterOfficersHolly Sharpley
Case officer · Westminster Planning

Holly Sharpley.

Active — last recorded decision May 2026

A case officer at Westminster with an approval rate of 93% across 374 decided planning applications, spanning 14 wards.[1] Decision speed and appeal performance publish when decision notices are ingested.

Planning officer374 decisions93% approvalSave
Westminster · 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 →
374
Applications
2020–26
Approval rate over time — tougher or softer 🔒Dashed line = London average
avg 81%85%202096%202198%202297%202386%2024100%2026
Approval-rate trend is subscriber dataSubscribe to see the trend →
What they decide — by application type
How they compareVersus peers
Approval rate93% · 20th of 76
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 reports299 officer reports parsed
2%
Approves despite concerns
of approvals record a documented reservation
3%
Negotiated approvals
approvals mentioning revisions/amendments
2%
"On balance" reports
reports using explicit balancing language
88%
Bespoke reasoning
of report text written for the case, not recited
What they write about — vs Westminster's average officer

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

Character & heritage
1.91× borough avg
Materials & detailing
1.16× borough avg
Precedent & consistency
1.15× borough avg
Trees & landscape
0.74× borough avg
Noise & disturbance
0.7× borough avg

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

How they reason — coded from their reports

Sharpley's caseload is Portman Estate/Harley Street listed-building consent for internal fit-out and repair, with one of the highest approval rates in this corpus. Her distinguishing habit is recording physical investigation FINDINGS rather than assumptions about hidden fabric — she notes what was found on opening up a floor or wall ('investigations beneath the boarded floor found that no floorboards survive') and lets that finding drive the acceptability judgement directly. She is willing to negotiate a repair-not-replace outcome for weathered/exposed fabric mid-application, and defers incomplete elements of a scheme (e.g. secondary glazing detail) to a later, separate application rather than holding up the whole decision.

Observable habits

· records the actual finding of a physical/structural investigation (opened-up floor, wall) rather than an assumption, and lets that finding directly drive the significance judgement

· negotiates a repair-rather-than-replace outcome for weathered or exposed original fabric during the course of the application

· defers an incomplete or under-detailed element of a scheme (e.g. secondary glazing specification) to a future separate application rather than holding up the rest of the decision

· explicitly notes when a listed building's interior was 'altered significantly prior to their listing' as reducing the weight given to later internal changes

What their reports consistently look for

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the actual physical finding once fabric is opened up or investigated, not an assumption about what survives

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether repair (rather than replacement) of weathered original fabric can be negotiated during the application

· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether an interior was materially altered before the building was even listed, reducing the weight of later changes

Assigned Holly Sharpley 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

Investigations beneath the boarded floor found that no floorboards survive. Furthermore, the skirtings in the flat are modern replacements and are of no interest.

20/00009/LBC

The proposals have been negotiated to ensure fabric is retained and repaired rather than replaced.

20/00019/FULL

Further detail regarding the secondary glazing is required, however, this element of the proposals has been omitted from this application.

20/00019/FULL

Measured from 299 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.

Policy playbook — what this officer cites[3]

The policies this officer cites most in their own reports — times cited across 299 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.

DES 10
13 times cited
MD1
8 times cited
MD3
8 times cited
DES 9
7 times cited
DES 1
6 times cited
MD2
6 times cited
DES 5
4 times cited
S33
4 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
25/09224/FULL
Full Planning Permission Application
Withdrawn
2026-06-02
26/03452/LBC
Listed Building Consent Application
2026-05-26
25/09224/FULL
Full Planning Permission Application
Withdrawn
2026-06-02
26/03452/LBC
Listed Building Consent Application
2026-05-26
Full application history locked
Subscribe to see all 374 decisions →
Consultants approved most— subscriber data
1. Gerald Eve LLP
2. Savills
3. CBRE
4. Firstplan
At a glance
OfficerHolly Sharpley
RolePlanning officer
Experience
Applications374 (2020–26)
Approval rate93%
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 Westminster 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 Westminster 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 299 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.
Methodology is published in full so every number is traceable to its primary source.