Privacy Notice for the Tunbridge Wells Draft Statement of Community Involvement consultation April 2026

Telephone: 01892 526121

Email: dataprotection@tunbridgewells.gov.uk

We collect information from you when you provide comments/representations as part of the public consultation on the Tunbridge WellsDraft Statement of Community Involvement consultation.

Contact information such as your name, email, telephone number and postal address. Also any responses you make to the consultation will be held alongside your contact details.

The lawful basis for processing your information as set out in Article 6 of the UK GDPR is:

Article 6 (1) (e) Public Task - the processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest and has a clear basis in law.

At the end of the consultation period, your responses will be considered in the further preparation of the Statement of Community Involvement which will be considered by relevant Council committees prior to its formal adoption by the Council. Thereafter the Statement of Community Involvement will be used for engagement purposes in the preparation of Local Plans and other planning policy documents and during the processing and consideration of planning applications, appeals and enforcement matters.

In the event that any responses are published by the Borough Council (including on our website), no personal details (such as email, address, phone number) relating to them will be published. However, names of groups, organisations and individuals may be published where considered necessary.

• Objective, our consultation portal software providers, will store your information for support purposes only.

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 the right 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.

You can request further details about the council’s Retention Schedule by emailing dataprotection@tunbridgewells.gov.uk.

What security precautions are 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 by sending an email to dataprotection@tunbridgewells.gov.uk.

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

Telephone: 0303 123 1113

Online: you can visit the Information Commissioner's Office website.

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