Privacy notice pre application advice

We collect information about you in order to provide you with the pre-application advice service. Our pre application advice privacy notice explains how we use your personal information and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Information we collect

As part of this process we will be asking you for:

  •  applicant’s name, address and contact details
  • agent’s name address and contact details
  • contact details for gaining access to the site
  • evidence supporting your application. In the main this will be plans and technical statements but within this you may include personal, financial, medical or ethnic information to justify your application

Why we collect this information

We collect  the previous information to enable us to provide pre-application advice on a proposed development.

Who we might share your information with

We may share your personal information with:

  • the joint planning and building control database and document management system, which may be accessed by staff working in these departments and staff in other departments who work on behalf of planning such as our contact centre who deal with planning related queries
  • other internal consultees and external advisors, to enable us to provide an accurate response on whether planning permission is likely to be forthcoming
  • our councillors, who receive a weekly list of pre-application advice requests so that they are aware of possible developments within the district
  • third parties, contractors or consultants when we occasionally have to outsource the processing of pre-application advice applications. If this is done they will be obliged to comply with our data protection policies and will not be able to use your information for any other purpose than processing the request on our behalf. They will not use or pass on your information for any other purpose

Additionally, if we receive a request, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) or Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), to disclose information relating to pre-application advice, we are obliged to do so unless the information is deemed exempt under the Act. We can only withhold information under FOI or EIR if the information falls under one of the exemptions (FOI) or exceptions (EIR) set out in legislation. If you consider that your advice request is confidential you should first seek legal advice and inform us as to the advice received at the time of submitting the pre-application planning advice application where confidentiality is an issue. However, whilst we will take account of this information, the final decision on whether the information should be disclosed rests with us.

What we do with your information

Your information is used to enable us to determine your request for pre-application advice.

If you are a regular agent, the planning department may contact you to update you with information in relation to the processing of pre-application advice. For example when there is a fee increase or if we are changing the way we handle pre-application advice requests. Your information will only be used to contact you with planning information and will not be used by other departments or for marketing purposes.

A customer satisfaction survey may be carried out from time to ensure that we are meeting our customer’s expectations and to enable us to review what we could do better to make the process quicker and clearer for applicants and agents. Your contact information will only be used in connection with your experience of the planning department and will not be used for marketing purposes. If you do not wish to proceed with the survey then you are free to decline.

How long we keep your information

Your request and our response are retained so that they can be matched up with any subsequent planning application that is submitted.

Your rights

You do have some legal rights in respect of the personal information we collect from you. Please see our Privacy policy page for further details.

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 at: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.

You can also contact our Data Protection Officer by email at data.protection@arun.gov.uk.