Data Protection Act 2018

You're welcome Rob Forgive me if I sound like I'm trying to teach you how to suck eggs; I'm sure you know better, but I think the use of Mailerlite, Mailchimp or ConvertKit should mostly take care of GDPR. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick with what you're trying to achieve?

No, it's no problem, thank you - I appreciate any help I can get, as this side of things is a bit new to me. As it happens, regarding emailing members, I might not actually do this in the end if it's not absolutely necessary. Originally I'd planned to switch off all members' "contact buttons", and then let each member switch back on if desired. But this might be going too far for this site, because I've now made the default for all newly registering members "off", so they have to actively select to have personal contacts - and all other members could make their decision to switch on or off at any time via their profile, so hopefully I'm covered in that particular respect. But if you think of anything else that I ought to do to make this forum compliant, I welcome any advice, thank you.

Hi, This is a very dry subject - but it really important to know. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) is designed to safeguard our current data but it is being misunderstood by many organisations. I've just had a mini meltdown after looking through the Coventry Planning Portal and finding ALL HISTORIC PLANNING APPLICATIONS HAVE BEEN REMOVED. Fearing these have been deleted and leaving only the hit and miss access to the archives as the only option is a significant step backwards. I have it on good authority that the digital records have been kept by the council but are no longer on public display - it appears GDPR has not given any time frame as to when a record is current vs historic. The council are willing to share the data but a request via the Environmental Information Regulations EIR has to be made.. to me this is a ridculous process given that most of the old records any one in involved is no longer with us, so I can't see why this is such a deep concern. Also, many of the records don't have much in them, but others are gold mines, especially for work such as the Coventry Rebuilt Project. I'm now left having a hit and miss approach in finding useful information - let alone all the officer hours I'll be taking up asking for information, I hope they don't get silly and start charging. What is more worrying, I've heard from other councils that they have deleted, dumped and shredded huge volumes of their historic planning archives - this also goes beyond just councils, company archives are also being deleted to ensure compliance. Historians will look back on this time as the information black hole!

I have sympathy but I'm more worried about councils using this to do whatever they want in regards planning. Most are hoping to become building companies to rake in money. They'll be poacher, gamekeeper and red tape barrier to the public knowing what's going on. Digital is a massive risk to all historical data. People are trusting their images to the Cloud or their computers and have no plan how those things will be preserved for the future. I must work out a way to fix my research to be printed but allow for inserts as new images turn up.

I agree 'Coventry Rebuilt', removing old planning applications is a terrible shame for researchers and local historians. I myself have often used old planning applications when researching old buildings. From a practical point of view, in terms of planning, this seems myopic as often it is useful to look at the planning history of land or a building to assess whether a planning application is permissible. As for other councils destroying their old planning documents it's as short sighted as the BBC taping over the lost episodes of 'Doctor Who' or 'Dad's Army'. It's a good job no one destroyed the Doomsday Book or the insurance maps of 1897.

This is why you don't destroy old planning applications and plans (BBC news article (2011)).