Privacy notice - Planning Policy

The Planning Policy Team undertake a number of statutory duties under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, The Localism Act 2011, The Housing and Planning Act 2016 and The Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015. 

To provide this service, it is necessary for the Council to collect, store and process some personal information, in order to maintain accurate registers of information and undertake consultations in line with the Council's published Statement of Community Involvement (SCI).

The information we will collect from you

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

• Contact details (Name, address, telephone number and email address, if provided)
• Comments you have made in relation to the Local Plan and any other planning documents
• Local connection test details such as age, residency, employment details (relating to the self build register) 

How we collect Personal Information

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

• when you register with us for consultation alerts
• when you submit a representation or comment on a Local Plan related document
• when you contact us via telephone, letter or email, and 
• when you submit a self-build register form.  

We will process personal data in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as follows:

Lawful Basis (Article 6)
c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject;
e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller;

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

Special Category Data

Special category data is defined by the GDPR as follows:

1. Racial or ethnic origin
2. Political opinions
3. Religious or philosophical beliefs
4. Trade union membership
5. Genetic data (new)
6. Biometric data (new)
7. Health data

Your information will be used to carry out our statutory duties in accordance with the above Acts, examples of this include:

• inform the preparation of the Local Plan; 
• everyone who submits comments and/or representations will be added to the relevant consultation database (if not already included) so that we can properly consider them as part of the statutory planning process; and to keep you up to date with progress; and
• inform the preparation of self-build register. 

Comments and representations may be included in reports of consultation which will be made publicly available and published on the Council’s website. Address and contacts details will not be shared; however, your name and any information you choose to provide in your comments could be published.

The security of your personal information is important to us. This is why we follow a range of security policies and procedures to control and safeguard access to and use of your personal information.

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.

All records relating to the creation, implementation and management of the Local Plan will be retained until six years after the date the Local Plan expires.

Your personal information will not be processed overseas.

At no time will your information be passed to organisations external to us and our partners for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your prior express consent.

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