Planning Services Pre-Applications Privacy Notice

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council
Mount Pleasant Road
Royal Tunbridge Wells
Kent
TN1 1RS

Email: dataprotection@tunbridgewells.gov.uk

Telephone: 01892 526121

We collect personal information about you such as your name and address. This information is provided to us as part of your planning application. Sometimes other information you may feel is sensitive to you is also part of the application. This may be financial or health information, for example.

We collect this information to provide planning pre-application services, because it is in the wider public interest to do so and in accordance with current government advice. If you do not provide us with your personal information, we may be unable to provide this service to you.

The information Tunbridge Wells Borough Council planning service collects will be stored by Maidstone Borough Council on our behalf. You can view their privacy information on the Maidstone Borough Council website.

If you make a payment to us, Civica will also use your information, but only on our instructions. They won’t use it for any other reasons, and they have to look after it in the same way we would. You can view their privacy information on the Civica website.

We use the information you provide to process your request for pre-application advice. We will not use it for any other purposes without your consent, or without telling you first.

Sometimes we have to give it to other authorities, organisations or people. This would be for the prevention or detection of crime, or because of legal matters, for example. We don't need your consent to do this, but if we can, we'll let you know if we've passed your information on.

• Access – you can request copies of any of your personal information that is held by the council.
• Rectification – you can ask us to correct any incorrect information.
• Deletion – you can ask us to delete your personal information. The council can refuse to delete information if we have a lawful reason to keep this.
• Portability – you can ask us to transfer your personal data to different services or to you.
• Right to object or restrict processing – you have the right to object to how your data is being used and how it is going to be used in the future.
• Right to prevent automatic decisions – you have to challenge a decision that affects you that has been made automatically without human intervention, for example an online form with an instant decision.

We will only keep your information for as long as we need it. Once we no longer need it, we will keep it for a set period (a retention period) but not use it. When the retention period expires, we will delete your information from our records.

See our Retention Schedule for further details.

What security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse, or alteration of your information?

We are strongly committed to data security and will take reasonable and appropriate steps to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration, or corruption. We have put in place physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard the information you provide to us.

We want to ensure any information we hold is accurate. You can help us by promptly informing us of any changes to the information we hold about you.

There are no automated decisions in this process.

If you are accessing online services and are aged 13 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

What are cookies and why are they used?

Cookies are small text files which identify your computer to our servers. They are used to improve the user experience.

View what cookies we use and how you can manage them on our privacy and cookies page.

If you would like to make a complaint regarding the use of your personal data, you can contact our Data Protection Officer:

Email: dataprotection@tunbridgewells.gov.uk

For independent advice about data protection, privacy, and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at:

Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.

Alternatively, visit Information Commissioner's Office website or email casework@ico.org.uk.