| Statement
of Intent |
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From time to time, you will be
asked to submit personal information about yourself (eg name and
email address etc) in order to receive or use services on our
website. Occasionally, you may be asked to provide us with
information regarding your personal, professional interests and
more detailed personal information.
By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable
Planning Service to provide you with the services you select.
Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat
that information in accordance with this policy. Our services
are designed to give you the information that you want to
receive. Planning Service will act in accordance with current
legislation and aim to meet current Internet best practice. |
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| Information
on visitors |
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During the course of any visit
to the Planning Service Website, the pages you see, along with
something called a cookie, are downloaded to your computer (see
point 3 for more on this). Most, if not all, websites do this,
because cookies allow the website publisher to do useful things
like find out whether the computer (and probably its user) has
visited the site before. This is done on a repeat visit by
checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last
visit.
Any information that is supplied by cookies can help us better
understand your needs in order to provide you with a better
service and it assists us to analyse the profile of our
visitors. For example: if on a previous visit you went to, say,
the Development Plans and Policy pages, then we might find this
out from your cookie and highlight Development Plans and Policy
information on a subsequent visit. |
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| What
is a cookie? |
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When you enter a site your
computer will automatically be issued with a cookie. A cookie is
a software tag used to identify visitors to our site. Cookies
are text files and their purpose is to remember user preferences
by identifying your computer to our server. Cookies in
themselves do not identify the individual user, just the
computer used. Many sites do this whenever a user visits their
site in order to track traffic flows.
Cookies themselves only record those areas of the site that have
been visited by the computer in question, and for how long.
Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all
cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to
receive cookies at any time. The last of these, of course, means
that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to
that user. |
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| Submitting
personal information |
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| When you supply any personal
information to Planning Service we have legal obligations
towards you in the way we process and handle that data. We must
collect the information fairly (see the notices on particular
web pages that let you know why we are requesting the
information); we must let you know how we will use it; and we
must tell you in advance if we decide to pass the information on
to anyone else. We will hold your personal information on our
systems for as long as you use the service you have requested,
and remove it in the event that the purpose has been met, or, in
the case of a personalised service, when you no longer wish to
continue your registration as a personalised user. Where
personal information is held for people who are not registered
users of the site, that information will be held only as long as
necessary to ensure that the service is run smoothly. We will
ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely,
in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. |
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| Access
to your personal information |
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| You have the right to request a
copy of the personal information Planning Service holds about
you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. Please address
requests to Planning Service using the contact address available
on our Website. |
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| Direct
marketing and user surveys |
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| As the services provided by
Planning Service expand, there will be more opportunities to
enhance the services provided to you. We may offer you the
opportunity to participate in surveys carried out by Planning
Service, or its agents, that help our research into the types of
service we offer. Planning Service will keep a record of
information provided by you. Please note that any information
you provide to Planning Service will only be used within
Planning Service. It will never be supplied to third parties
without first obtaining your consent unless we are obliged by
law to disclose information. |
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| Users
under 18 |
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| If you are under 18, please get
your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you
provide personal information to the Planning Service’s
Website. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide
us with personal information. |
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