Planning Policy privacy notice

We ask that you read this privacy notice carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.

Who we are

Dorset Council's Planning Policy Service (including the Spatial Policy and Implementation Team) collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

The personal information we collect

Information collected by us

In the course of: the production, review and monitoring of planning policy documents, such as Local Plans, Neighbourhood Plans and Supplementary Planning Documents (SPDs); the keeping of registers, such as the Self Build and Custom Housebuilding Register; the administration of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL); and negotiations on planning applications, it is necessary that we collect the following personal information from you:

• your name
• your phone numbers
• your email address
• your home address.

At times, we may need or you will want to supply other personal information such as your date of birth, marital status, gender, ethnic status, information on family members, medical, health or details on vulnerabilities and financial information regarding yourself or your existing or proposed business interests. The type of information we collect will depend on the nature of the enquiry and we will never ask for more personal data than is necessary in order to deal with your enquiry or response on planning documents.

Information collected from other sources

We also obtain personal information from other sources as follows:

• other services within Dorset Council
• other government partners and agencies
• other third-party partners

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information, in the manners specified below, in order to ensure that we are able to deliver the highest quality service to you:

• for the purposes of the production, review and monitoring of planning policy documents, including Local Plans, SPDs and Neighbourhood Plans
• for the purposes of undertaking a referendum in relation to a Neighbourhood Plan
• for the purposes of keeping and updating registers, such as Self Build and Custom  Housebuilding Registers and Brownfield Land Registers
• for the purposes of the collection, spending and administration of the Community Infrastructure Levy
• for the purposes of making development management decisions including the determination of planning applications and planning appeals; and producing planning agreements.

Who we share your personal information with

In order to exercise the above activities in an efficient way, we routinely share personal data with other service departments within the Dorset Council, such as the Development Management, Electoral, Economic Development, Finance, Housing and Legal Services. We may also share personal data with other government partners and agencies, such as the District Valuer, the Environment Agency, Historic England and Natural England.

This data sharing enables us to ensure the best service is delivered. We do not anticipate that our data-transferring arrangements will involve a transfer outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).

On occasion we may be required to share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law. Where this occurs we will attempt to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place.

We will not share your personal information with any other third party.

Whether information has to be provided by you, and if so why

The provision of the personal data (as set out above) is required from you to enable us to deliver our services. We will inform you at the point of collecting information from you, whether you are required to provide the information to us.

Failing to provide information may result in:

• us not being able to consult with you or deal with a response you have made in relation to a draft planning policy document
• you not being able to participate in a referendum in relation to a neighbourhood plan
• you not being included on a register, such as self build and custom housebuilding registers or Brownfield Land Register;
• us taking legal action in relation to the collection, spending and administration of the Community Infrastructure Levy
• your views not being taken into account in development management decisions.

How long your personal information will be kept

We will hold the personal data provided by you until the relevant matter is concluded. In the case of planning policy documents, we may retain personal data until the relevant document is superceded. For auditing and accountability purposes we routinely hold information for a period of six years from conclusion or resolution of a matter or longer if we have an obligation to retain this information.

Reasons for collecting and using your personal information

We rely on planning legislation, for example regulations relating to consultation on planning policy documents and the collection, administration and spending of CIL, as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal data.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights that may be exercised free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

• fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your use personal information
• access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this privacy notice is already designed to address
• require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
• require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
• receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
• object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing
• object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information
• otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

For further information on each of those rights you can visit the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer.

In order that we can comply with such a request as soon as possible, it would be useful if you could provide the following information within your initial request:

• enough information to identify you eg reference, account number, user name, registration details
• proof of your identity and address eg a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill
• the information to which your request relates.

If you would like to unsubscribe from any email newsletter you can also click on the ‘unsubscribe’ button located at the bottom of the email. It may take up to 28 days for this to take place.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

If you would like to find out more about protecting your personal information, please visit Get Safe Online which is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.

How to complain

We hope that our Data Protection Officer can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner.

Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was published on1 April 2019. There are no amendments since publication, when amendments are made to this page we will update this section. We recommend that you review this section from time to time so that you are aware of the latest version of this notice.

How to contact us

Please contact our Data Protection Officer if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you.

Do you need extra help?

If you would like this notice in another format please contact us.