Planning Skills Delivery Fund: privacy notice
Source: gov.uk (2025-08-28)

Privacy notice for the Planning Skills Delivery Fund.

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 xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx) or by writing to the following address:

Data Protection Officer Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local GovernmentFry 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) monitoring 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 monitoring return. 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 the monitoring of 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 monitoring return for PSDF funding, along with details of your monitoring return, 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 monitoring return (due in November 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 TeamMinistry of Housing, Communities and Local GovernmentFry Building2 Marsham StreetLondonSW1P 4DF

You can also lodge a complaint with the independent Information Commissioner (ICO) (#complaints) 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 monitoring return (due in November 2025).

11. Complaints and more information

If you are not happy with how we are using your personal data, you should first contact xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx).

If you are still not happy, or for independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing, you can contact:

The Information Commissioner’s OfficeWycliffe HouseWater LaneWilmslow, Cheshire,SK9 5AF

Telephone: xx-xxxx-xxxx or xx-xxxx-xxxx

https://ico.org.uk/