Our Petitions service provides you with the opportunity to start and sign petitions on issues relating to:

  1. our responsibilities/functions; and/or
  2. to an improvement in the economic, social or environmental well-being of the Borough to which any of our partners (eg: Dartford and Gravesham Community Safety Partnership) could contribute

Processing activity - it is necessary for us to collect and hold personal information about you which will be used for the administration of our petitions service (both paper and electronic).

Information requirements - the personal information we collect from you when you start and sign a petition will include:

  • name, address, telephone number(s), email address
  • signature
  • subject matter of petition
  • the IP address used when starting or signing a petition
  • equalities monitoring
  • general correspondence between you and us on matters related to your petition

Lawful bases[1]- our lawful bases for processing your personal information are:

[1] Note that we may process your personal information on more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your information

  • UK GDPR Article 6(1)(c) - necessary for compliance with legal obligation to which we are subject
  • UK GDPR Article 6(1)(e) and section 8(c) Data Protection Act 2018 - necessary for the performance of a task in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in us,

pursuant to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009.

Why we need your data - we use this information to:

  • make sure that people only sign a petition once
  • check that you are eligible to sign a petition
  • contact you about petitions you start
  • update you at each stage of the consideration of your petition

Data sharing - in order to respond to your petition, your information will be shared with your local ward member, councillors, the relevant service department and where applicable, our partner(s).

We will not sell or rent your data to third parties or share your data with third parties for marketing purposes.

We may share your personal information if we’re required to do so by law - for example, by court order, or to prevent fraud or other crime.

Your name, signature, email, postal address and/or phone number(s) will not be publicly disclosed. Petitions relating to planning applications are handled by a separate process and are published to our Planning Portal.

Retention period - we keep your personal information for the minimum period necessary. The information outlined in this Privacy Notice will be kept for a period of three months. All information will be held securely and disposed of confidentially.

Anonymisation - your personal information may be converted ('anonymised') into statistical or aggregated data in such a way that ensures that you cannot be identified from it. Aggregated data cannot, by definition, be linked back to you as an individual and may be used to conduct research and analysis, including the preparation of statistics for use in our reports such as showing the number of complaints we receive and/or equalities monitoring, but not in a form which identifies anyone.

Right to object - where processing your personal information is required for the performance of a public interest task (see our lawful bases above), you have the right to object on ‘grounds relating to your particular situation’. We will have to demonstrate why it is appropriate for us to continue to use your personal data.

Changes to this Privacy Notice - we review this Privacy Notice regularly and will place updates on our website.

Please refer to our Corporate Privacy Notice for further details of how we process your personal information and for details on your additional rights.

GDPR Petitions Service Privacy Notice