Privacy notice preliminary enquiries

Our preliminary enquiries privacy notice explains how we use your personal information and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

We collect information about you in order to provide you with a response to a general planning enquiry which does not fall within the category of an application, pre application advice or a compliance case. For example, queries raised by solicitors when a property is being sold.

Information we collect

In order to respond to your enquiry we will be asking you for:

  • your name, address and contact details
  • agents/solicitors name address and contact details (if applicable)
  • your request/information provided which may include personal, financial, medical or ethnic information you have supplied to us

Why we collect this information

It is important to collect the above information from you, as it enables us to provide a response to your planning related enquiry.

Who we might share your information with

We may share your personal information with/on :

  • the joint planning and building control data base 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 departments to enable us to provide a full answer to the queries raised. Sometimes they are across departments for example building control and local land charges
  • third parties, contractors or consultants who we might outsource work to. 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

In addition, if we receive a request, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) or Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), to disclose information, 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.

What we do with your information

Your information is used to enable us to respond to your enquiry.

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 is retained as it forms part of the planning history relating to the property/site.

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.