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Planning consultations

Purpose and lawful basis for processing

Our purpose for processing this information is so we can manage and respond to planning consultations we have received from planning authorities (where SEPA acts as a statutory consultee) and individuals.

The lawful basis we rely on to process your personal data is article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR, which allows us to process personal data when this is necessary to perform our public tasks as a regulator.

What we need

When a planning consultation or enquiry is sent to us, it may include:

• Name
• Business or personal contact details
• Email address
• The original correspondence (if this includes any sensitive information that we don’t require to respond or is not relevant to our remit, this will be deleted and not stored by us)

Why we need it

We use the information supplied to us to deal with the consultation and provide you with our planning response or to reply to your query.

What we do with it

We register details of all planning consultations we receive on our Planning Casework System to record the various stages the consultation will go through and to internally manage the consultation and issue our response to it.  We’ll also keep a record of our response.

How long we keep it

We will keep personal information for 12 months.

What are your rights

When we receive planning consultations or queries, we process personal data in our capacity as a regulator, so you have a right to object to our processing of your personal data. There are some legitimate reasons why we may refuse your objection, which depend on why we are processing it.

For more information on your rights, please see ‘Your data protection rights’.

Do we use data processors

No

Do we share your information

In some circumstances, personal data may be shared where this is included in our planning response, for example using an applicant’s email address to Cc them in to the email response.