Planning applications and enforcement complaints - Privacy Notice

Who we are and what we do

The Councils are a data controller under the Data Protection Legislation as we collect and process personal information about you in order to provide Development Management and Enforcement services and meet our statutory obligations.

This notice explains why we ask for your personal information, how that information will be used and how you can access your records.

Why we are collecting your data

Adur & Worthing Councils will use the personal information you provide for the purpose of assessing and processing your planning application and investigating alleged breaches of planning control. We will only collect the personal data from you we need in order to do so.

The Council has a statutory duty under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended) to collect and process this information to provide the required service.

The consequence of not completing the planning application form, providing the supporting information for any application and agreeing to this use of your personal information, is that the Council will be unable to process your planning application.

If you are making an objection or representation to a planning or related application then your personal data will be used to deal with the application which you are objecting to or making representations about.

What is the legal basis for processing the data?

The legal basis we rely on to process your personal data is article 6(1)(e) of the GDPR, which allows us to process personal data when this is necessary to perform our public tasks as local authorities. This is in line with planning legislation which takes the form of:

Submission of a Planning Application

Planning applications are held as a public register as required by the Development Management Procedure Order 2015. The information is also published in the Planning Portal on our website except for:

Personal contact details of the applicant, eg telephone numbers, email addresses
Signatures
Personal sensitive information
Information identified as confidential

If you are submitting supporting information which you consider as being confidential or wish to be specifically withheld from the Public Register, please bring this to our attention.

Commenting on a Planning Application

It is our policy to publish comments received in relation to a planning application on our Planning Portal. The following information would be withheld:

Personal contact details of the applicant, eg telephone numbers, email addresses
Signatures
Personal sensitive information
Information identified as confidential

This information may also be used and provided to the Secretary of State in any subsequent planning appeal.

We may disclose information to third parties where it is necessary to comply with a legal obligation.

Where we need to disclose sensitive information such as medical details to a third party, we will do so once we have obtained your explicit consent, or where we are legally required to. We may disclose information when necessary to prevent risk of harm to an individual.

Enforcement cases remain confidential and at no time will we divulge the details of complainants who have informed us of alleged planning breaches.

The councils are required by law to protect the public funds they administer. We may use any of the information you provided for the prevention and detection of fraud. We may also share information with other bodies that are responsible for auditing or administering public funds, including the Cabinet Office.

The Cabinet Office requires councils to participate in data matching exercises to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. Councils are required to provide particular sets of data to the Cabinet Office for this purpose and cannot refuse to hand over this data.

We will not

Use your information for marketing or sales purposes without your prior explicit consent
Send or store your data abroad
Make decisions about you based on automated processing

How long will we hold your data for?

Planning applications will be kept permanently.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access:
You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification:
You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to erasure:
You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to restriction of processing:
You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing:
You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to data portability:
You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

If you wish to make a request please contact us at:

planning@adur-worthing.gov.uk

Contact Details:

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, or the collection and use of personal information, please contact:

Data Protection Officer
Adur & Worthing Councils,
Worthing Town Hall,
Chapel Road,
Worthing,
West Sussex,
BN11 1HA
Email: data.protection@adur-worthing.gov.uk
Telephone: 01903 239999

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us (see Data Protection Officer contact details above).

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data: