Privacy and Data Protection

General

The Durham City Neighbourhood Planning Forum is the data controller. The Forum is registered on the Information Commissioner’s data protection register, reference number ZA122556.

Survey data

When collecting your views via questionnaires or official consultation we may also ask for some personal details, which you do not have to give, but they will help us work out which areas respondents live in, and the characteristics of respondents. These details are held securely by Forum members responsible for analysing the data as original paper forms and as electronic files. Additionally, these details will be made available to the Independent Examiner as evidence that the planning process has been properly conducted. Only anonymised data will be placed in the public domain. We will abide by the requirements of the Data Protection Act and the General Data Processing Regulations, keep personal details secure and confidential, use them only for these purposes, and securely delete them once the work of the Forum has been completed.

If you use the comment facility on this website your name, though not your email address, will be made public. See further information under ground rules.

Newsletter

We use a software package called phpList to send out emails. In order to do this we need your email address, and this is stored in a database. We also have your personal name, if you told us it. This information has been gathered in several ways: by filling out a sheet at a Neighbourhood Planning Forum meeting, or an event where the Forum was present, or by emailing us. For developers, or their representatives, this information was obtained by inviting them to join the mailing list. This invite went via Durham County Council, and we only hold information from organisations who contacted us in response to that invite. Additionally, developers can request to join the list via personal contact or email.

In addition the system holds the following information:

  • The date and time we added your name to the database.
  • If you signed up for the newsletter via this website, details of when you did so and when you confirmed your subscription. If you do not confirm your subscription within a week of requesting a subscription (perhaps somebody else filled out the form in your name) then we will delete your details as soon as is practical.
  • We also hold the IP address of the device used to sign you up and some technical details of the browser that was used.
  • We have a list of the messages that have been sent to you.
  • We know when you reconfirmed your subscription in advance of the introduction of the General Data Processing Regulations.
  • If a newsletter cannot be delivered then it will bounce back to us. We keep a count of these bounces, and also details of them. If three messages in a row bounce back we will delete your record.
  • If you no longer wish to receive emails from us then there is a link at the foot of each message to cancel your subscription. If you cancel your subscription we will immediately flag your record to send no more messages, and remove your details as soon as is practical.
  • We hold other technical information necessary for the internal functioning of the newsletter software.

All of the above information will remain confidential to the officers of the Neighbourhood Planning Forum; we won’t pass it to anybody else unless we are required to do so by law, nor will we send out mailings on behalf of anybody else unless they are relevant to the Neighbourhood Plan. Each newsletter you receive will remind you how you can unsubscribe, and you will also be able to do this via the website.

We will securely delete the newsletter database and all the information it contains once the work of the Forum has been completed.

The newsletter is used to send out information about Forum activities and matters relevant to the Neighbourhood Plan. Subscribers can only see their own email address on the messages they receive. A subscriber can only respond to the Forum; they cannot enter into correspondence with any other subscriber via this newsletter.

We will, if you request us to:

  • send you a copy of all the information we hold about you. We may levy a statutory fee.
  • send you an electronic copy of your data or transmit it to another data controller (the “right to data portability”)
  • correct the information we hold about you
  • erase your personal data (though in this case, we recommend clicking the Unsubscribe link at the foot of any newsletter).
  • consider restricting or suppressing the processing of your personal data. This is a limited right, and we will abide by guidance issued by the Information Commissioner.

To make these requests, email or write to
Durham City Neighbourhood Planning Forum
The Miners’ Hall
Redhills,
DURHAM   DH1 4BD

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of text stored in your computer, and they contain information needed to make the website function. Currently we only store one cookie, which has the name of PHPSESSID. This is strictly necessary for the functioning of the website. It is used to maintain information about each visit to the website and enable core site functionality. This cookie does not contain any personal information and only lasts for the duration of your visit. When you close your browser it is erased.

In addition, Twitter, Facebook and Google store cookies. See the foregoing links for further details.

Internet log information

When someone visits our website we collect standard internet log information so that we can find out things like the number of visitors to the various parts of the website. This information includes your IP address, which could be used to identify the device used to look at the website. We will not however attempt to do this except if required to do so by law enforcement agencies, or to investigate and prevent abuse of the website.

Right of complaint to the Regulator for Data Protection

The data protection laws in the UK are regulated and enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Each individual has the right to raise a concern/complaint to the ICO if they have any concerns about how their personal information and/or privacy is treated. You can do this via the ICO’s website, follow the links or have an online Live Chat.

 

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