Privacy notice for consultations

Who we are and what we do

Durham County Council is responsible for services across the county such as: education, transport, planning, fire and public safety, social care for children and adults, libraries, waste management, trading standards, refuse collection, recycling, Council Tax collections, housing and planning applications amongst others.

The Best Value Statutory Guidance means that we have a Duty to Consult representatives of a wide range of local people including representatives of Council Tax payers, those who use or are likely to use services provided by the authority, and those appearing to have an interest in any area within which we carry out functions.

In addition, the Public Sector Equality Duty / Equality Act 2010 means that we have a responsibility to carry out an Equality Impact Assessment to help us to analyse our policies and practices to make sure we do not discriminate or disadvantage people by treating them less favourably because of their protected characteristic.

Spatial policy, which has a specific area of the consultation portal, supports the development of Neighbourhood Plans, Transport, Housing and Economic Policy and is responsible for the development of the County Durham Plan. This Plan sets out new development planned for the county and contains policies for how planning applications are determined. See Privacy notice - spatial policy (PDF, 38 KB).

The type of personal information we collect and how we collect it

We engage communities and other stakeholders to help us to develop plans and services. At times, we will also consult to help us with our decision making. As part of the consultation, we will ask people to provide us with equalities information about themselves to help us meet our duty.

Therefore, we may collect the following information:

• Full name and email address.
• Post codes or part of a post code - to understand if views differ from different geographical parts of the county.

And the following special category data:

• Equalities data including age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief, ethnicity and armed forces veterans, all of which are optional responses.

We will also retain your information (your full name and email address) if you register to use the consultation platform to be notified about future consultation activities or other relevant matters. This will also include any responses you make where registration is mandatory to comment on a planning matter or take part in a public discussion. Please see the section at the bottom of this page for more information about our Go Vocal consultation portal - Let's Talk County Durham, hosted by Go Vocal.

The age of consent for online services is 13 years old and we want to be inclusive of young people in our consultation and engagement activities which are of specific interest to them. Young people can register for an account and the same information will be asked of them to register; being their name and email address. Consultations with young people will always be facilitated via an advocate.

How we collect personal information

We may collect your personal information through:

• our online consultation portal, Let's Talk County Durham, hosted by Go Vocal
• electronically through an online survey form
• electronically when signing up to an event
• paper survey form
• electronically if you contact us from an email address
• face to face via interview with an interviewer using a paper or electronic survey
• letter response which you send us
• telephone interview

What our lawful basis is to obtain and use your personal information

Lawful Basis (Article 6):

(c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject.
(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.

And for special category data (Article 9):

(b) processing is necessary for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights of the controller or of the data subject in the field of employment and social security and social protection law.
(j) processing is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance with Article 89 (1) based on Union or Member State law which shall be proportionate to the aim pursued, respect the essence of the right to data protection and provide for suitable and specific measures to safeguard the fundamental rights and the interests of the data subject.

And for spatial policy:

It is a statutory function for councils to produce Local Plan documents and as such, under local government legislation, is a task in the public interest and in the exercise of the official authority.

How we use your personal information

• To comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty / Equality Act 2010.
• To help us make informed decisions.
• To comply with the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012 (as amended and other associated planning legislation).
• Where you have registered your interest by following / taking part in a consultation or indicated a geographic or topic interest, to inform you of new consultations, new stages or changes to existing ones.
• Responses to public consultations where registration is required, will be made publicly available to view on our online consultation portal and may be attributable to your name (and organisation and client if this information is provided), however any other personal information you provide will not be made public.

If responses include personal data, this will be redacted. Responses including libellous, discriminatory, or otherwise offensive comments will not be made publicly available or may be redacted.

All comments and personal data will be stored in an electronic format in the council's consultation portal. This portal is provided by a third party, and we have a formal contract with this data processor. They have access to view your personal data but will not process the data in any way.

You are entitled to withdraw your comments or views up until the point that the consultation closes. Should you do so, your comments and associated data will be permanently deleted as soon as reasonably possible, and your comments will not be considered.

Reasons we may share your personal information

Your personal data will only be processed by our staff. However, your data may be shared with consultants working to support our teams, as well as relevant partner organisations, stakeholders or statutory bodies such as independent planning inspectors / examiners.

The council will also use the information for the purpose of performing any of its statutory enforcement duties. It will make any disclosures required by law and it may also share this information with other bodies responsible for detecting / preventing fraud or auditing / administering public funds.

Your information will not be disclosed to any other organisations, except where the council is required and allowed to by law. The council will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Our online consultation portal has the ability to use AI to assist officers in the analysis and summarisation of comments made. The AI only has access to the anonymised comments and no personal data will be provided to the AI.

Microsoft Office 365 is the platform used for many of the council's desktop and collaboration services. This cloud-based suite updates our previous versions of Microsoft Office and introduces new tools for a more collaborative working environment. View Microsoft's privacy information.

How your information is kept secure

The security of your personal information is important to us. This is why we follow a range of security policies and procedures to control and safeguard access to and use of your personal information. Examples of our security for consultations include:

• Controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it.
• Training for our staff allows us to make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong.
• Regular testing of our technology and ways of working including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches).
• Paper responses are scanned into electronic secure systems and then destroyed.

Information and data submitted will be retained on our software system, Let's Talk County Durham with appropriate security controls in place to protect it.

How long we keep your information for

After we consult, we must keep your information as a business record to show how we have gathered the data to create a consultation report of findings.

The retention periods for consultation data are as follows:

• Six years after closure of consultation.
• The retention period for spatial policy consultations is life of the planning document or six years.

Processing personal information outside of the UK/EU

Your personal data is stored on our IT infrastructure and shared with our data processors, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. It may be transferred and stored securely in the UK and European Economic Area (EEA). If your data is stored outside the UK and EEA, it will have equivalent legal protection through Model Contract Clauses.

Marketing

At no time will your information be passed to organisations external to us and our partners for marketing purposes or for any commercial use without your prior express consent.

Your information rights

Your information rights are set out in the law. Subject to some legal exceptions, you have the right to:

• access your personal data
• have any inaccuracies corrected
• have your personal data erased
• place a restriction on our processing of your data
• object to processing, and
• to request your data to be ported (data portability)

To exercise your rights, you can apply online or download an application form from our Privacy notices and data protection page or you can contact the data protection team at inforights@durham.gov.uk.

To learn more about these rights please see Information Commissioner's Office: Individual rights - guidance and resources.

Further information

Our Data Protection Officer (DPO) provides help and guidance to make sure we apply the best standards to protecting your personal information. If something goes wrong with your personal information, or you have questions about how we process your data, please contact our Information Governance team at inforights@durham.gov.uk or write to:

DPO
Chief Executives Services
Council Offices
Green Lane
Spennymoor
County Durham
United Kingdom
DL16 6JQ

If we have not been able to deal with your complaint, you can also contact the .

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

Telephone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745

More information about the Go Vocal portal - Let's Talk County Durham

Data that will be visible to other people on the platform if you register and create an account

You will be able to take part in most activities on the portal, such as surveys, without registering for an account. However, registering and providing us with some of your details will help us to ensure that we are collecting and listening to a diverse voice across the county. It will also ensure that you are able to fully participate on the platform, allowing you to follow topics that interest you, leave comments, take part in discussions, interact within projects and submit your input.

Data visible to other users on the platform

When you create your account, other users can only see your name, profile picture (recommended but optional), the date you've joined, and any public comments or submissions you've made - nothing more - the same way you can see what submissions or comments they've left as well.

Data visible to platform admins

Platform admins are the people that manage and run the platform, and therefore also have access to other data provided by you on the platform, for instance in the registration process.

If we ask you to verify your email before you can take part

To enable participation in certain projects, such as events, if you haven't a registered account, we may collect your email address as part of the verification process. The email addresses are used to confirm that they exist and belong to real users.

We do not share this information publicly. Only platform admins have access to the data provided during verification.

Reviewing and updating your profile

You can review and update your data anytime through your profile settings. All your personal data are subject to the privacy policy, outlined above, and which you agree to when you first register your account. You can find this at any time by going to the bottom of the page and selecting "Privacy Policy".