Planning policy privacy notice
The Planning Services department of Elmbridge Borough Council collect information about you in order to provide you with the following service: to enable the planning policy team to undertake public consultation at various stages in the preparation of planning policy documents.
We can be contacted via the online contact form.
Lawful basis for collecting your personal data
Our lawful basis for processing your personal data under Article 6(1) of the UK GDPR is:
- public task: the processing is necessary for the performance a task in the public interest or for the exercise of official authority
Information we may collect
We use a database to hold contact details of those who wish to be consulted on the preparation of planning documents, such as the Elmbridge Local Plan.
Contacts include statutory consultees e.g. Surrey County Council; as well as members of the public who have asked to be kept informed or have responded to a consultation by submitting a representation. Contact data for the consultation bodies are collected including residents/interest groups who also request to be added to the database on an ad-hoc basis.
The data we collect is as follows: name, company, position; home/business address, email address, telephone number, interest group or who representing (if applicable), category of consultee e.g. specific consultation body/resident/agent/landowner, and any representation/s made. We also collect general data such as age range and ethnicity, to ensure conformity with the Equalities Act 2010. This data is kept anonymously.
Why we collect this information
Under The Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012, there is a statutory requirement to consult “general” and “specific” consultation bodies and “such residents or other persons carrying out business in the local planning authority’s area from which the local planning authority consider it appropriate to invite representations” as part of the preparation of a local plan/development plan documents/other planning policy documents. The collection of this information enables us to perform this function and ensure that we can notify those interested in consultations on the Local Plan and other planning policy documents.
Who we may share your information with
At each stage of the consultation process, representations are stored as a record on the database and/or sent to the Planning Inspector or Programme Officer (an independent officer appointed to work under the Inspector’s direction).
Only your name, company, interest group (if applicable), category of consultee and the detail of your representation(s) will be made publicly available through the database. Postal addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers will not be made publicly available. All information can be viewed by planning policy officers in an un-redacted form internally on the planning database. Other internal departments may wish to access planning policy information and all information from the public domain will be shared with other internal departments.
What we do with your information
The contact data is held on the database and used for mail outs (letter and email) notifying contacts of consultations on the local plan and other planning policy documents. Subsequently, contact details are linked to representations which (at certain stages of the consultation process) are sent to the planning inspector or programme officer (an independent officer appointed to work under the Inspector’s direction) and/or stored as a record on the database.
How long we keep your information
Data will be retained in line with our data retention policy, which is normally two years. However, you are able to inform us at any time to remove yourself from the database.
Your rights
You do have some legal rights in respect of the personal information we collect from you. Please see our corporate privacy notice for further details.
You can also contact our Data Protection Officer by email at dataprotection@elmbridge.gov.uk.
If you have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), see Information Commissioner's Office: Make a complaint.