Planning Policy Privacy Notice

The London Borough of Hounslow is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Through this Privacy Notice we have sought to be as transparent as possible and fully explain how your personal data is held and processed.

This privacy notice applies to services provided by Spatial Planning and tells you what to expect us to do with your personal information.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or any concerns about how we process your data, please contact spp@hounslow.gov.uk. The privacy notice will continue to be monitored and updated. You are advised to check this page from time to time.

What this Privacy Notice covers

This Privacy Notice explains how the Council(s) use information in the course of our Planning Policy work as a local planning authority. This work includes:

Preparing Local Plans and associated planning policies / guidance / appraisals
Working with neighbourhoods on their plans
Working with neighbouring authorities on strategic policies
Brownfield and Self Build Land Registers
Monitoring development

Hounslow Council is the data controllers (referred to in this notice as 'we' or 'us') of your personal data for the purposes of applicable data protection legislation in relation to statutory plan making and associated Planning Policy work.

What type of information we have

We currently collect and process the following information:

Your name
Company/organisation address
Telephone number and email
Information about the proposed development and existing site
Information that you choose to tell us as part of your consultation response

How do we get your information?

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:

You may give us your personal data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email.
You may provide personal data when you respond to a planning related consultation
You may provide personal data when you submit land or potential development sites to the Council for consideration through land availability assessments or the Brownfield Land Register

If it is not disproportionate or prejudicial, we’ll contact you to let you know we are processing your personal information.

Our Lawful basis for processing your information

The Council processes personal data in relation to Planning Policy, in accordance with legal obligations to which the Council is subject to. The lawful basis for processing is:

Article 6(1) (c) – Processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation,
Article 6(1) (e) – Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the Public Interest

Relevant legislation:

Hounslow Council is undertaking a Local Plan review to meet the provisions of the Localism Act (2011), the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act (2004).
The legislative texts that the Council rely on include the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended) and any regulations made there under.
Self-Build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015

Why we need your information (purposes of processing)

The personal data we collect will be used for the following purposes:

The Spatial Planning (SP) Consultation Database allows the Council to keep local community and stakeholders, including residents, businesses, interest groups and landowners, informed of the preparation of planning documents. Enrolment onto the Councils Consultation Database is not automatic and needs to be requested.
For the purpose of plan making, the Council will use contacts on the SP Database to ensure you are kept aware of upcoming consultations.
Those on the SP Database will also be kept aware of any Call for Sites exercises. This provides landowners and developers with the opportunity to submit land for consideration through the Local Plan process as potential allocation sites.
For the purpose of plan making, the Council will use contacts obtained through the exercise to ensure you are kept aware of upcoming consultations and should further details about sites be required from the Council.
The Council can use your information on the Self-Build/Custom Build register to maintain a list of people and groups interested in self-build and custom build housing.
The brownfield land register allows the council to provide house builders with up-to-date and publicly available information on all brownfield sites available for housing in the borough.
The Council will use your name or company name attributed to your comment in any Engagement and Consultation Statement made accompanying the Local Plan and other planning documents

Other purposes include:

You have requested to be informed of planning policy consultations on the production of new documents or updates to existing planning publications.
You have registered your interest, through the Regulation 19 process, in speaking at the Public Examination of the Local Plan.
You have previously responded to planning policy consultations
You have promoted land through our ‘Call for Sites’ for consideration as part of a Site Allocations Local Plan review; or

You are identified as a consultee* in the Council’s Statement of Community Involvement.
You have declared an interest in Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC)

*If you or your company or organisation is identified as a consultee in statutory regulations or within the Council’s consultation documents, you/your organisation will remain on the contact list even if you indicate otherwise.

Who your information may be shared with (internally and externally)

The SP Database is used to inform interested parties of upcoming consultations and is not shared outside of routine data sharing within this Local Authority.
However, in undertaking its statutory duties for the production of the Local Plan and other planning documents, the Council may employ external consultants to undertake certain aspects of the plan-making process.
In such instances, the Council will provide the external consultant with your comments but not necessarily your contact details without your consent. This will only be done if it is absolutely necessary for the consultant to contact you regarding the production of the Local Plan or other planning documents.
We are also required to ask other organisations to provide their professional opinions regarding proposed developments. These are known as statutory consultees. These organisations will have access to the same information as above.
We may share personal data with other departments within the Council. We will not provide personal data to anyone else or use the data about you for any other purpose unless the law allows or requires us to.
When planning documents are formally submitted for Examination, representations made on the document in question, along with your name and contact details, will also be shared with the appointed Planning Inspector (this is in line with the Town and Country Planning Regulations) and may be made public.
In the case of Neighbourhood Plans, the Spatial Planning Team is responsible only for that data collected as a result of Hounslow Council duties in respect of Neighbourhood Plans. Responses to Neighbourhood Plan Consultations including your personal data will be shared with the Planning Inspector examining the Neighbourhood Plan to be in line with Regulation 17 of the Neighbourhood Planning (General) Regulations 2012 (as amended).

How long we keep your information

The contacts on the SP Database will be retained until we receive a request to remove or amend the contact. We will undertake reviews of the Consultation Database periodically, particularly following consultations when we receive notifications of non-deliveries and requests for amendments/removals. Due to GDPR we are unable to automatically add suggested replacement email addresses specified in ‘out of office’ replies to the database, unless the contact in question has requested this.

The information on the Self Build Land Registers will be held until we receive a request to remove or amend the contact. The register will be reviewed every five, years, when you will be asked if you would like your information to be retained on the register.

We will strive to ensure that any personal data in our care will be kept safe and that where your information is disclosed to a third party working on our behalf, we will seek to ensure that they have sufficient systems and procedures in place to prevent the loss or damage of personal data.

Local plan review examination meetings

This section of the privacy notice relates to the management of, and live streaming of, the London Borough of Hounslow (the Council) Local Plan review Examination Hearing meetings which are tobe held in the Council building.

What type of information we have

If you would like to participate in the hearing meetings, the Programme Officer will ask you for your

name;
email address;
telephone number.

How do we get your information?

If you wish to participate at the examination, we may collect, store and use personal information about you. This information will be collected by email, in writing, by telephone or via the Regulation 19 Consultation, prior to the examination meetings and is collected in order to manage your participation.

Our Lawful basis for processing your information

The lawful basis we rely on for processing this information is:

Article 6(1)(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.

Relevant legislation:

Regulation 22 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012.
Section 20 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

Why we need your information (purposes of processing)

Your personal information will be processed by The Planning Inspectorate for the purposes of:

conducting the examination. Hounslow Council, as the local planning authority provides a Programme Officer to support the Inspector, and representations are exchanged between the local planning authority and the Inspector through the Programme Officer. Your contact details will be used by the Programme Officer to manage your request to participate in the meetings and facilitate your taking part.

Who your information may be shared with (internally and externally)

We will only share your personal data with third parties where required by law.

All of the council’s third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes and they may only process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

If you wish to participate in the meeting, then names of those invited and participating will be viewable by others taking part in the meeting.

How long we keep your information

We will retain your personal information until the relevant document it has been collected for is superseded. This is to fulfil the necessary purposes we collected it for, including:

for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
to ensure representations can be taken account of in any future hearings required.

Transfers to third countries

All the information you provide us is held within the UK & European Economic Area.

Your data protection rights

The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information. For further information about your data protection rights and how to make a request, please see ‘Your rights’

Your right to make a complaint

The Council tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.

If you want to make a complaint you can contact us on:

Complaints Team
London Borough of Hounslow
Hounslow House
7 Bath Road
TW3 3EB

Data Protection Officer

The Council’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted on:

InformationGovernance@hounslow.gov.uk

Information Governance Team
London Borough of Hounslow
Hounslow House
7 Bath Road
TW3 3EB

Information Commissioner’s Office

The Information Commissioner is the UK's independent body set up to uphold information rights.

If you would like to know more about your rights under the Data Protection law, and what you should expect, visit the Information Commissioner’s website: https://ico.org.uk/

If you have any concerns regarding any privacy practices or about exercising your Data Protection rights, you may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office:

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

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545 745

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

A full list of what information we control and process and for what purposes is set out in our notification with the Information Commissioner's Register of Data Controllers. Our registration number is Z5761176. You can view our registration on the Information Commissioner's website.

Last updated: 16 August 2024