Oliver Padmore.
Active — last recorded decision Apr 2026
A case officer at Westminster with an approval rate of 92% across 296 decided planning applications, spanning 19 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×.
Padmore is precise about assessing an unauthorised shopfront situation against the LAWFUL PREVIOUS arrangement rather than the current unlawful state — refusing to let a departure from lawful permission set the baseline for judgement. On Metropolitan Open Land applications he applies the green-belt-equivalent 'very special circumstances' test rigorously, weighing genuine public-infrastructure benefit (critical water supply) directly against the harm of inappropriate development, and cites a directly comparable precedent (a similar temporary structure approved for the 2012 Olympics on the same site) as informing the current judgement.
· assesses an unauthorised/unlawful existing arrangement against its LAWFUL PREVIOUS state, refusing to let the current unlawful condition set the baseline for judging a regularisation application
· applies the Green Belt-equivalent 'very special circumstances' test on Metropolitan Open Land rigorously, weighing a specific genuine public benefit (critical infrastructure) directly against defined harm
· cites a directly comparable precedent on the SAME site (a similar temporary structure previously approved for a specific past event) as informing the current judgement on design and acceptability
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the LAWFUL PREVIOUS arrangement (not the current unlawful state) as the baseline for assessing a regularisation application
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: a specific, weighable public benefit that could constitute 'very special circumstances' justifying development on Metropolitan Open Land
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: a directly comparable precedent structure previously approved on the same site for a specific past purpose
“this application is therefore not assessed against the existing shopfront which does not benefit from permission but is assessed against its previous arrangement”
23/05960/FULL
“This site has previously been used for temporary structures including during the 2012 Olympic Games (ref no. 12/03863/FULL)”
23/06627/FULL
Measured from 119 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 119 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 19 rows
Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2021–26.[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, 2021–26. · 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 119 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.