Planning Skills Delivery Fund: privacy notice
Privacy notice for the Planning Skills Delivery Fund.
Applies to England
The following is to explain your rights and give you the information you are be entitled to under the Data Protection Act 2018.
This privacy notice only refers to your personal data (your name, address and anything that could be used to identify you personally), not the content of your form.
1. The identity of the data controller and contact details of our Data Protection Officer
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is the data controller. The Data Protection Officer can be contacted at dataprotection@communities.gov.uk or by writing to the following address:
Data Protection Officer
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
2. Why we are collecting your personal data
Your personal data is being collected as an essential part of the Planning Skills Delivery Fund (PSDF) quarterly return process, so that we can contact you regarding your response and for statistical purposes. We may also use it to contact you about related matters.
We will collect your IP address as you are completing an application online. We may use this to ensure that each person only completes a questionnaire once. We will not use this data for any other purpose.
3. Sensitive types of personal data
Please do not share special category personal data or criminal offence data if we have not asked for this unless absolutely necessary for the purposes of your application. By ‘special category personal data’, we mean information about a living individual’s:
- race
- ethnic origin
- political opinions
- religious or philosophical beliefs
- trade union membership
- genetics
- biometrics
- health (including disability-related information)
- sex life
- sexual orientation
By ‘criminal offence data’, we mean information relating to a living individual’s criminal convictions or offences or related security measures.
4. Our legal basis for processing your personal data
The collection of your personal data is lawful under article 6(1)(e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation as it is necessary for the performance by MHCLG of a task in the public interest/in the exercise of official authority vested in the data controller. Section 8(d) of the Data Protection Act 2018 states that this will include processing of personal data that is necessary for the exercise of a function of the Crown, a Minister of the Crown or a government department i.e. in this case an application for funding.
5. With whom we will be sharing your personal data
MHCLG may share your data with other government departments and external delivery partners to facilitate the PSDF and the learning programme.
MHCLG is working with the Planning Advisory Service (PAS), an organisation funded by MHCLG, for the purposes of delivering learning activities within this programme. The personal data you provided through your application for PSDF funding, along with details of your application, may be shared with PAS for the purposes of facilitating this learning programme. PAS will store this data in accordance with their privacy policies.
MHCLG may also invite you to participate in additional learning programme activities ran by other providers, for the purposes of tracking longer term impacts of the PSDF. Where this is the case, we will notify you of who these providers are, and give you sufficient opportunity in advance to indicate that you do not want your data shared with these providers.
Your contributions to this learning programme may be shared with relevant organisations (such as other local authorities) in the form of outputs, presentations and/or reports, but your personal data will not be shared through these outputs.
Where we do share your data with a third party, we will ensure that the processing of your personal data remains in strict accordance with the requirements of the data protection legislation.
6. For how long we will keep your personal data, or criteria used to determine the retention period
Your personal data will be held for 2 years from receipt of the final quarterly report (due in September 2025), unless we identify that its continued retention is unnecessary before that point.
7. Your rights, for example, access, rectification, erasure
The data we are collecting is your personal data, and you have considerable say over what happens to it.
You have the right to:
- see what data we have about you
- ask us to stop using your data, but keep it on record
- ask to have your data corrected if it is incorrect or incomplete
- object to our use of your personal data in certain circumstances
Contact us using the following address if you wish to exercise any of the rights listed:
Knowledge and Information Access Team
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
You can also lodge a complaint with the independent Information Commissioner (ICO) if you think we are not handling your data fairly or in accordance with the law.
8. Sending data overseas
Your personal data will not be sent overseas.
9. Automated decision making
Your personal data will not be used for any automated decision making.
10. Storage, security and data management
Your personal data will be stored in a secure government IT system.
We use an in-house system to collect and store the data. Your personal data will be stored on a secure server and will remain there for 2 years after receipt of the final quarterly report (due in September 2025).
11. Complaints and more information
If you are not happy with how we are using your personal data, you should first contact dataprotection@communities.gov.uk.
If you are still not happy, or for independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing, you can contact:
The Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow, Cheshire,
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545 745