Thomas Bertwistle.
Last recorded decision Apr 2020 — no decisions in this record since
A case officer at Hackney with an approval rate of 87% across 140 decided planning applications, spanning 21 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 Hackney reports. Attention, not stance.
Mark = borough average (1×). Bar capped at 2×.
Bertwistle's flat-amalgamation cases cite the specific DM20/DM23 policy pairing and confirm no loss of three-or-more units occurs, and his lawfulness-certificate refusals point to a specific missing document type (Council Tax records for the specific unit) as the decisive gap.
· confirms explicitly that an amalgamation does not breach the 'loss of three or more dwellings' policy threshold before endorsing it
· names the exact missing document type (e.g. Council Tax records for the specific flat) as the decisive gap in a lawfulness case
· notes when an application's own supporting statement references unrelated addresses/wards, flagging this as a quality-of-evidence concern
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: explicit confirmation that a flat amalgamation does not cross the three-or-more-dwellings loss threshold
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: the specific named document type missing from a lawfulness case (e.g. Council Tax records for the specific unit)
· what this officer's reports consistently look for: whether an applicant's own supporting statement contains errors (wrong address/ward references) that undermine its reliability
“The proposal would result in 1x non-family unit and 1x family unit being amalgamated into a 4 bedroom family unit. This would not result in a loss of three or more units and would retain the sole family unit on site.”
2020/0008
“The applicant has supplied no evidence to demonstrate that the upper floors of the building have been in continuous residential use for the last four years. A review of Council tax records shows no evidence that t”
2020/0101
“The design and access statement makes reference to other addresses and wards outside of the London Borough of Hackney when referring to the proposal.”
2020/0101
Measured from 40 published Hackney 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 40 parsed reports. Whether refusals citing each survive appeal isn't traced per policy yet.
Show all 21 rows
Where this officer's caseload concentrates, 2018–20.[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 Hackney planning register and published decision notices, 2018–20. · 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 Hackney 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 40 published Hackney 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.