What is this notice?
This Privacy Notice relates to the eDevelopment.scot service operated by the Scottish Government. This notice explains our privacy policy and sets out how we use any personal information submitted to, and retained by, the service.
What is the eDevelopment service?
The eDevelopment service was developed primarily to modernise Scotland’s planning and building standards systems, and to allow users to make their submissions electronically through a single Scotland-wide portal.
The eDevelopment.scot service itself comprises two web portals: ePlanning.scot and eBuildingStandards.scot. Together, these portals link users who wish to submit planning applications, building warrant applications, and a selection of other forms online to the relevant Scottish local and planning authorities. Some appeals can also be made via the service to the Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (DPEA).
Who is responsible for the service?
The Digital Planning team within the Scottish Government manage the eDevelopment.scot service on behalf of all Scottish local and planning authorities. The portal servers and databases are maintained by the Scottish Government’s Information and Technology Services (iTECS) and their contracted IT providers.
In addition to the public-facing eDevelopment.scot service, we also operate and manage administrative portals that we use for administering the service and content management. Local and planning authorities have restricted access to the live Admin portals where they can undertake a number of administrative tasks, including running reports on the service (e.g. statistics) and customising information relating to their authority.
What information do we retain and for how long?
We retain your account details and information that you enter when registering for the service, and will continue to for as long as you have an account with the service.
All submitted applications are deleted from the portal database 90 days following the submission date. The retention of submitted applications for this limited period allows users to view their submitted applications, to download them, to enable them to use a recent submission as a template for a new submission (if required), and allow for recently received applications to be downloaded again by a Local Authority should they require it.
Any applications that you leave in draft on the portal will contain your personal data. Your draft applications will not be transferred to authorities nor will they be accessible to anyone with administrative access to the service.
Your draft applications will be retained in the database until:
- you unregister from the service,
- you submit them (where they will be deleted 90 days following submission),
- you delete them from your account, or
- they are automatically deleted by the service if they have not been accessed in the previous 12 months.
The legal basis for processing information set out in applications between the service and local and/or planning authorities, and the service and DPEA, falls within Article 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is undertaken as a Public Task.
Will I be contacted by the service?
We will contact you by email in the following circumstances. You will receive emails from the service when you submit an application, when we issue reminders to access your account if you have not done so in some time, or reminders to update a draft application prior to deletion. There may be instances where we contact you to advise about upcoming changes to the service, and particularly in the event of changes or service issues that could affect you as a user and affect how you use the service. This includes when we make changes to our Privacy Notice or Terms and Conditions.
The Scottish Government aims to continuously improve the eDevelopment site and if you consent to doing so, we may periodically contact you to seek your views on the service and ask how we’ve done on our Support Desk. You can select whether you wish to be contacted by us about this on your ‘My Account’ page.
In conjunction with all local authorities in Scotland, the Scottish Government undertakes an annual national customer satisfaction survey for building standards. If you submit an application through the eBuildingStandards.scot portal, you may be invited to participate in this survey by email. If contacted, you may opt in to complete it or choose to unsubscribe from reminder emails relating to the survey.
What are my rights and responsibilities?
By registering for the eDevelopment.scot service and making submissions through it to your local and/or planning authorities, or to the DPEA, you accept and consent to the Terms and Conditions for the service and the practices set out in this Privacy Notice.
As a user of the service, you can access the information that is held in your registered account and have the ability to update this information at any time by logging in and visiting ‘My Account’.
Can I unregister from the service?
Yes. Should you wish, you can unregister from the service at any time by logging into your account and clicking on a link in the ‘My Account’ page of the site. After unregistering, all information held relating to your account, and any draft applications and recent submissions held by the service, will be deleted.
Can my account and my draft applications be deleted by the service?
Yes. In order to comply with Data Protection legislation, we ask that you ensure that your account details are kept regularly up to date. Your account, any associated submissions and draft application forms that you retain in your account, including any that you are designated as the ‘primary contact’ for, will be automatically deleted if you fail to log onto the website or update your account information for 18 months. Ahead of this, we will issue emails to all affected users after 12, 14 and 16 months notifying them of this and advising that their account will be deleted if they fail to act within this timeframe.
If your account is deleted, you are free to register again for the service should you wish to do so.
If you have any applications that are in draft and these have not been accessed by you or another user in your organisation in the last 12 months, they will be deleted. We will issue emails on a monthly basis to all users that have not accessed or edited a draft application form in the last 11 months, and will provide 30 days' notice prior to deletion. This email will list the application forms that are scheduled for deletion and provide guidance on how to avoid this.
This policy has been introduced to ensure that we only retain current information on your draft
Can I share proposals with other users?
Yes. Other users can be given ‘editor’ rights (able to add, complete and submit application forms underneath that proposal) or ‘viewer’ rights (able to view draft applications forms only). This can be done from the ‘proposal summary’ screen by scrolling down and selecting ‘send invitation’ or ‘modify proposal users’. If you elect to share your proposal with another user, you are providing them with authority to edit and submit any application forms under that proposal.
We would suggest that organisation users ensure that current and active users of the service are the ‘primary contacts’ for all of their proposals. The ‘primary contact’ of a proposal can be changed by any user that ‘shares’ and has ‘editor’ rights to the proposal. This can be done by accessing the proposal, scrolling down the ‘Proposal Summary’ page, and selecting the link to ‘modify proposal users’.
This is important as if your account is deleted or you unregister from the service, other users that you have shared proposals and draft application forms with may also be affected. For example, if your account is deleted, all proposals that you have created (that you are the ‘primary contact’ for), and any draft applications developed under these proposals will also be deleted. This includes draft application forms shared with or developed by other users under these proposals. If this were to occur, other users would need to create a new proposal and complete another application form in order to submit it.
How can I find out more about the privacy policy?
We aim to resolve any enquiries or concerns that our users may have about the processing of their personal data whilst using the eDevelopment.scot service. For any enquiry or concern about this privacy policy, we ask that you please contact the Helpdesk at eDevelopment@gov.scot.
Further information on this process can be obtained from the Scottish Government Data Protection Officer in writing to the Data Protection and Information Assets Team, Information and Technology Services, V Spur, Saughton House, Broomhouse Drive, Edinburgh, EH11 3XD, or by e-mail to dpa@gov.scot.
Details of how to access your personal data can also be obtained from Request personal data: form - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).
Other websites
We wish to advise that websites that are accessible through links from the eDevelopment.scot service are not covered by this privacy statement. We would advise that users read the relevant privacy policies when accessing other websites.
We would also advise that users that once they make an application or appeal through the eDevelopment.scot service that this information is passed on to the relevant authority and/or the DPEA. We recommend that users read the privacy policies developed by their local or planning authority and/or the DPEA to learn more about how this information will be used.
(Updated 23 December 2019)