Processing personal data and special category data is necessary for the exercise of planning functions, and any comment you make about an application must, by law, be placed on the file (which we make available via the Council’s website and include in any other form of the file held). The Council’s approach to publishing comments online is contained on our website, on consultation letters, on site notices, on any newspaper advert and on our online portal.
We operate a policy where we routinely redact the following details before making
representations available online:
● Personal contact details including house number, telephone numbers, email addresses only.
● Signatures
● Special Category Data – e.g. supporting statements that include information about
health conditions or ethnic origin.
This is in accordance with the Information Commissioner’s guidance.
As representations received form part of the planning register, these must be made available, and therefore if comments are submitted, you are agreeing for the comments and your name to be published on the website with only the data stated above redacted. Comments will be published online within 10 working days of submission.
In the event that the Council receives a complaint that information has not been redacted in accordance with the above, the Council will investigate and resolve the matter within 24 hours (within the working week) of receipt of the complaint. Any complaint must be sent to planning.services@thanet.gov.uk.
Comments that contain personal, racist, defamatory or derogatory material will not be taken into consideration or published. This also applies to photos that include images of people or any personal details. In most circumstances your comment will be returned to you and / or be totally disregarded. Any links to web addresses within representation will be redacted before being published.
Representations marked confidential (including in the text of the email) will not normally be taken into account as they cannot be made publicly available. We do not accept anonymous representations and anonymous complaints will be destroyed.
In the event that a representation received during a consultation process is requested to be removed/deleted/rescinded/not considered by the author of the representation, the Council take the following action within 5 working days of receiving the request:
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Delete the representation from all email locations (inbox, sent items, generic email boxes, any forwarding emails).
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Dispose any hard copies (or photocopies of the original) within confidential waste.
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Delete the representation from any database or document management system where the representation is held.
Upon completion of these tasks, the Council will notify the author that representation has been removed from the relevant record.
In the event that the Council receives a complaint that a representation has been published online contains personal, racist, defamatory or derogatory material, the Council will remove the representation in question and review whether it should be published online either in full or in part, or whether it should be returned. The Council will inform the complainant of the outcome of this review.
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