Planning Services - how we deal with your information

All planning application information is treated in line with a series of regulations and procedures.

Find out how we use information received from pre-application discussions.

Upon receiving your comments, an administrative officer will review the content and screen for any offensive language.

Find out how you can create a private login on the Planning Services page to submit a comment.

If you comment on an application, your name and address will be publicly available as required by planning legislation.

Comments submitted to planning services on applications should be restricted to matters relating to planning law.

If you change your mind about the comment you have sent us and want to withdraw it, you should contact the planning enquiries team or case officer by email using the same email address you used to submit your comment. If your comment was in writing, you should send us a written request. This is to stop people asking us to remove your comments without your permission.

As your comment is publicly available and published online it is possible for other people to use them for other purposes. Guildford Borough Council cannot be held responsible for the uses other agencies make of your comment. If you believe your comment has been used unfairly by anyone outside the Council, you would need to discuss it with them.

The planning register is available on our website. Information is available about who has made the application.

Find out how planning services handle your data.

If you have submitted a planning application to Guildford Borough Council, or a comment on an application, Planning Services will have saved your name and any contact details you have given us in our 'back office' software. We do this so that we can notify you of the outcome of the application, of any public meetings about the application, or if an appeal is lodged against the outcome of an application. Your name and address will also be on any electronic copies of your comments that we keep in our document management system (DMS). Building control application information submitted to us will be kept electronically stored on our DMS.

Our registers containing Planning and Building Control information do not have an expiry date, and because of this we will always have any details you have supplied to us stored electronically. An applicant's name and address is part of the public register for an application.

Your personal details help planning services to keep you informed about a planning application.

We may publish any photographs supplied during the life of the application. These will be published on the Guildford Borough Council website for public inspection. We will redact any photographs using redaction software to cover entirely or in part any photographs which contain personal information that is defined by the Data Protection Act (2018) which is not relevant or integral to the planning application.

There are two possible reasons for this:

Firstly, we may have changed the name of the document you are looking for in order to make it more obvious what the document contains, or because we have had to split the document into smaller parts to make it easier to download. Large files over 5 megabytes can cause issues for some customers so we may need to split them.

Secondly, we may have removed a document that belongs to another application and was placed there in error. As soon as we are aware of an issue, we will act to correct it.

We are unable to supply planning documents containing sensitive information.

We have a large amount of older planning and building control information that is stored on microfiche slides and a software system which is not available online. This information is available to view at the Guildford Borough Council offices during our published opening hours. We aim to make all of these records electronic and available online as time and resources allow.

Documents submitted as part of a planning application may be subject to copyright and copyright law, even if they have been available on the internet. You should only use planning application documents for research purposes related to that application. Planning Services making documents available to you does not constitute permission for you to breach any copyrights that may exist on them. In some circumstances, Planning Services may contact the copyright owner for clarification before issuing a document to you.

We broadcast some council meetings such as Planning Committee live on our website. The broadcasts are recorded and made available to watch again for 6 months following the date of the meeting.  You can also download these broadcasts save them to view at a later date.

If you speak at a public meeting this will be retained as part of the recording for a period of 6 months. Your name and the details of your spoken comments will be stored on the minutes of the Planning Committee and retained indefinitely on our website.

There is no general public right to inspect plans deposited under the Building Regulations.

Guildford Borough Council Building Control applications are dealt with under separate legislation, but are still subject to the same FOI, EIR and GDPR legislation.

There is no legal requirement to display information about Building Control applications on the internet, but because people may wish to check that work is being done to the relevant building regulations, the law does allow us to display details of applications.

In order to protect privacy, Guildford Borough Council will only make available summary information about the application and its progress. We will not publish drawings and plans.

If you believe there is information about a particular project to which you are entitled under the FOIA or EIR, you should submit the appropriate request to us for consideration. 

Find out about the register of all notices for works to trees in a conservation area.

Read our Local Land Charges privacy statement and find out how we use your personal information.

In order to maintain confidentiality and not jeopardise any current investigations, we do not display information about Planning Enforcements on our online planning system. We will publish enforcement information only when an Enforcement Notice has been issued. Personal information supplied to us through our online complaints form or through other means such as email such as your name, address and contact details will be retained on our back office system for the use of planning services staff. This information will then be retained indefinitely as part of history of the site to which the enforcement complaint has been made.

Learn how we use your data when you register or make a comment on our planning policy consultation website.

Planning Services commit to handling personal information in line with all relevant legislation.

Photographs are to illustrate the proposal set out in an application. They can also be used for representations of an application, either for or against. We have to make sure the planning process is transparent. This is to allow feedback and engagement.