Privacy Policy

About This Policy

This policy explains what personal data Plan Archive collects, why we collect it, what we do with it, and the rights you have over it.

It applies to planarchive.co.uk and to any service we provide through it.

We may update this policy from time to time. Where changes are material we will notify registered users by email or by a notice on the site before they take effect.

Who We Are

Plan Archive is based in England. We are not currently operated through a registered company.

For the purposes of the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, we are the data controller for personal data collected through Plan Archive.

If you have any question about this policy or about how we handle your data, contact us at support@planarchive.co.uk.

Data We Collect

Information you give us

• Account details — your name and email address when you register, and a securely hashed version of your password. We never store your password in a form we can read.
• Billing details — where you subscribe to a paid plan, your billing name, address and country. Card details are collected and held by our payment provider, not by us.
• Saved searches and alerts — the filters you save and the frequency at which you want to be notified.
• Documents you upload — where a feature allows you to upload your own material, the content of those documents.
• Correspondence — anything you send us by email or through a contact form.

Information we collect automatically

• Usage data — pages viewed, searches run and filters applied, so we can understand what the service is used for and improve it.
• Technical data — IP address, browser type and version, operating system, and referring page.
• Security data — the time, approximate location and device of sign-ins to your account, so we can detect unauthorised access and notify you of it.

What we do not collect

We do not collect special category data, and you should not send it to us. We do not buy personal data from third parties, and we do not build advertising profiles.

Why We Use Your Data, and Our Legal Basis

To provide the service

We use your account details, saved searches and uploaded documents to operate Plan Archive and give you the features you have asked for. Our legal basis is performance of a contract with you.

To take payment

We use your billing details to charge for subscriptions and to meet our accounting obligations. Our legal basis is performance of a contract and, for record retention, legal obligation.

To send service messages

We send emails necessary to operate your account — address verification, password resets, security notices and billing messages. These are not marketing and you cannot opt out of them while you hold an account. Our legal basis is performance of a contract.

To send alerts you have asked for

Where you set up an alert, we email you when a decision matches your saved search. You can change or stop these at any time. Our legal basis is consent.

To keep the service secure

We use technical and security data to detect and prevent unauthorised access, abuse and automated scraping. Our legal basis is legitimate interests — namely protecting our service, our data and our users.

To improve the service

We analyse usage in aggregate to understand which features are used and where people struggle. Our legal basis is legitimate interests in developing and improving what we offer. We have considered the impact on you and consider it minimal, as this analysis does not affect how you are treated.

To send marketing

If you have agreed to it, or are an existing customer and we are telling you about a similar service, we may email you about new features. Every such email contains an unsubscribe link. Our legal basis is consent or legitimate interests as permitted by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.

Personal Data in Appeal Decisions

Plan Archive publishes appeal decision letters issued by the Planning Inspectorate. Those documents routinely contain personal data, including the names of appellants, agents, inspectors and, occasionally, interested parties and neighbouring occupiers.

This material is published by the Planning Inspectorate under the Open Government Licence and is already in the public domain. We reproduce it as published, together with information extracted from it.

Our legal basis for processing this data is legitimate interests — the public interest in the transparency and accessibility of planning decisions, which are matters of public record determining the use of land. We have balanced this against the privacy interests of the individuals named, taking into account that the information is already public, that it relates to a public administrative process, and that it does not include special category data.

If you are named in a decision

If you appear in a decision published on Plan Archive and object to it, contact us at support@planarchive.co.uk. We will consider your request and respond. Where we cannot remove material — for example because the same document remains published by the Planning Inspectorate — we will explain why and tell you who else to approach.

Cookies and Similar Technologies

Essential cookies

We use a small number of cookies necessary for the site to work — keeping you signed in, remembering your cookie preferences, and protecting forms against cross-site request forgery. These do not require consent.

Analytics

Where we use analytics to understand how the site is used, we will ask for your consent first. You can change or withdraw that consent at any time.

Most browsers let you refuse or delete cookies. Blocking essential cookies will prevent parts of the service from working.

Who We Share Data With

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers.

We share data with a small number of service providers who process it on our behalf, under contracts that require them to protect it and to use it only for the purposes we specify:

• Hosting — our servers are provided by a cloud hosting provider, currently located in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area.
• Email delivery — a transactional email provider sends account and alert emails on our behalf.
• Payment processing — a payment provider handles subscription payments and holds card details directly.
• AI processing — we use a third-party language model provider to generate summaries and analysis of appeal decisions. Where a feature processes a document you have uploaded, the content of that document is sent to that provider for the purpose of producing your result.

We may also disclose data where we are required to do so by law, or where necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

If our business is sold or transferred, personal data may transfer with it. We would notify you before that happened and this policy would continue to apply.

International Transfers

Some of our service providers operate outside the United Kingdom, including in the United States. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, we ensure an appropriate safeguard is in place — normally the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, or a finding of adequacy by the UK government.

You can ask us for details of the safeguards applying to any particular transfer by contacting support@planarchive.co.uk.

How Long We Keep Data

• Account data — for as long as your account is open, and for up to 30 days after you close it, after which it is deleted or anonymised.
• Billing records — for six years after the end of the financial year to which they relate, to meet our obligations under UK tax law.
• Uploaded documents — until you delete them or close your account, whichever is sooner.
• Security logs — for up to 12 months.
• Usage analytics — in aggregated, non-identifying form, indefinitely.
• Correspondence — for up to two years after the matter is closed.

Your Rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• Be informed about how we use your data — which is the purpose of this policy.
• Access the personal data we hold about you, and receive a copy of it.
• Rectification — have inaccurate data corrected.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data, where there is no overriding reason for us to keep it.
• Restrict processing in certain circumstances, for example while a dispute about accuracy is resolved.
• Data portability — receive the data you gave us in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time.
• Withdraw consent where our processing relies on it, without affecting anything done beforehand.

To exercise any of these rights, email support@planarchive.co.uk. We will respond within one month. There is no charge, though we may charge a reasonable fee or refuse a request that is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

We may ask you to confirm your identity before acting on a request, to make sure we are not disclosing your data to someone else.

Automated Decision-Making

We do not make decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects about you by automated means.

Plan Archive uses automated processing to summarise and categorise appeal decisions, but this analyses published documents rather than evaluating you, and produces no decision about you.

Security

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data, including encryption in transit, hashed password storage, restricted database access, and separation between the systems that publish content and those that hold account data.

No system can be guaranteed completely secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours and will tell you where the law requires it.

Children

Plan Archive is a professional research tool intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with data, contact us and we will delete it.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us first at support@planarchive.co.uk so we have the opportunity to put it right.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House, Water Lane
Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

Contact

For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of your rights, contact us at support@planarchive.co.uk.