Privacy notice - Building Control

As the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) provider, Middlesbrough Council collects, processes and stores personal information about you in order to administer and assess building regulation applications and enquiries and to fulfil certain legal obligations with respect to building control. Under the Building Act 1984.

We are committed to protecting your privacy, and this notice is made in light of the requirements of Data Protection Legislation in order to advise you how we use your personal information.

We collect information from you when you submit a building regulation related application and supporting documentation or when you contact us about an existing application. This includes contact by email, letter or telephone.

We may also receive information about you from third parties, including agents.

In order to provide this service, we may need some or all of the following categories of personal information:

• Your name, address, email address, telephone number and other contact information that allow us to meet our organisational and statutory obligations
• Information relating to expressed opinions or intentions in respect of a building regulation related application
• Any other information you provide to us during the application process.

We may collect your Personal Information in a number of ways, for example:

• Application Form
• Application submission documents
• Pre Application enquiries – emails, telephone, letter,
• Comments in relation to consultations
• Other ways relating to the building regulation process

We have a legal obligation and it is necessary for the performance of our tasks in the public interest.

We do not seek to obtain Special Category Data: however, if your comments or representations include such, we will process this in accordance with the law.

We use the information we receive about you in order to administer building regulation related applications and determine their outcomes, and to fulfil our legal obligations around the process.

We do not use the information provided in the building regulation process for any other purposes unless we are required to do so by law.

The application for building regulations is NOT published, but the Information Commissioner's Office has determined that applications to the council can be inspected on request.

The completion certificate is a legal document and recorded as such and available through a land search. Completion is notified to other council departments including Council Tax.

We are required by law and good practice to undertake consultations with internal departments and external organisations to obtain their views on applications and pre application advice.  This involves sharing your submission details.

We will share information related to proposed developments with the Council’s Development Control in order to provide comprehensive advice on the need for permissions relating to your development proposals.  If you do not want us to share this information please make it clear at the time of submission.

We will not share your information with any other organisations unless required to do so by law.

We use a range of appropriate measures to ensure that your data is stored securely and only accessible by those who need to access it. However, as we are required to make certain information about related applications available to the public.

We also have a retention schedule and related processes in place to ensure that data we no longer require is either deleted from our systems or made sensitive

After we deliver a service to you, we have to keep your information as a business record of what was delivered. The type service will determine how long we have to keep it.

Our corporate retention guidelines show how long we keep it for different services. This ranges from months for some records to decades for more sensitive records. 

The retention periods for this service are as follows.

Building Regulation Application and correspondence – 15 years

The Council will not process your information overseas, however it may be necessary if requested by an external organisation under a legal requirement or at your request.  In any event we would ensure that your information is safe.

We will only send you information about our services and/or products if you have agreed for us to do so or we are sending you information in relation to similar services you have received in the past.  You can opt out of this at any time by letting us know by unsubscribing or replying with your request.

Your Information Rights are set out in law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:

• Right to rectification - to ask for information to be corrected
• Right to erasure - to have your personal data deleted
• Right to object - to how your data is used
• Right to restriction - to request limits on how your data is used
• Right to portability - to request that we move your data to another organisation
• Right of subject access - to request a copy of data the Council holds about you

If you have a concerns 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. Visit the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice or your information rights, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer
Middlesbrough Council
PO Box 500, Middlesbrough, TS1 9FT
Phone: 01642 245432
Email: dataprotection@middlesbrough.gov.uk