Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Placemaker is a platform for public consultation on planning and development projects. Each consultation on this platform is run by an organisation — such as a council, developer, or their consultants — who decides what feedback to collect and how it is used. Placemaker provides the software they use to collect and analyse it.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal data the platform collects, how it is used, and your rights. We handle personal data in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

2. Data We Collect

We only collect personal data you actively choose to submit:

• Map feedback: Comments you attach to map pins or drawn shapes, the map location you choose, and — optionally — your name
• Form responses: Answers you submit through consultation feedback forms, which may include your name and contact details where a form asks for them
• Enquiries: Your name, email address, and message when you submit an enquiry, plus phone number and organisation if you provide them
• Account data: For consultation teams using the dashboard — name, email address, and a securely hashed password
• Vote de-duplication: When you vote on a map comment, we store a hashed (one-way, irreversible) identifier derived from your connection to limit duplicate votes; we do not store your IP address itself alongside your feedback

Every public submission requires your explicit consent at the point of submission, and we record when that consent was given.

3. How Your Data Is Used

• Public display of map feedback: Map comments are reviewed by the consultation team before publication. Once approved, your comment — together with your name, if you provided one — is visible to anyone viewing the consultation map. Your email address is never displayed publicly.
• Review by the consultation team: The organisation running the consultation can see your full submissions, including any contact details you provided, in order to understand and respond to public feedback.
• AI-assisted analysis: The text of submissions is analysed to produce sentiment summaries, common themes, and reports for the consultation team (see section 4).
• Legal compliance: Where required by planning regulations or other legal obligations.

We do not send marketing emails, operate mailing lists, or use your contact details for any purpose beyond the consultation you contributed to.

4. AI-Assisted Analysis

To help consultation teams understand large volumes of feedback, the text of submissions is processed by an AI service (provided by Anthropic) to generate summaries, sentiment analysis, and theme identification. This analysis is advisory only: it summarises feedback in aggregate and is not used to make automated decisions about any individual. Under our agreement with the provider, submissions sent for analysis are not used to train AI models.

5. Legal Basis for Processing

• Consent: You give explicit consent when submitting feedback, forms, or enquiries
• Legitimate interests: Running consultations and analysing feedback for planning purposes
• Legal obligation: Compliance with planning regulations and other laws

6. Who Can See Your Data

• The public: Approved map comments (with name, if given) are publicly visible. Form responses and enquiries are never publicly visible.
• The consultation team: The organisation running the consultation sees full submissions, including contact details.
• Consultation reports: Feedback may be quoted in consultation reports and planning submissions; contact details are removed unless you have given explicit consent.

We never sell personal data. We use a small number of service providers to operate the platform: our database is hosted with Supabase in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany), the application is hosted by Vercel, and AI analysis is provided by Anthropic in the United States. Where data is processed outside the UK, transfers are protected by appropriate safeguards, including standard contractual clauses.

The interactive maps are provided by Google Maps. When you view a consultation map, your browser connects directly to Google, which processes your IP address in order to deliver the map. See Google's own privacy policy for how it handles this data.

7. Data Retention

We retain personal data for as long as necessary for the consultation it was submitted to, plus any statutory retention period that applies to planning applications (typically 6 years after completion). Data is deleted when the consultation project it belongs to is deleted.

8. Your Rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the following rights:

• Right of Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Right to Rectification: Request correction of inaccurate personal data
• Right to Erasure: Request deletion of your personal data (subject to legal retention requirements)
• Right to Restrict Processing: Request limitation of how we use your data
• Right to Data Portability: Request your data in a machine-readable format
• Right to Object: Object to processing based on legitimate interests
• Right to Withdraw Consent: Withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details below.

9. Cookies

We use only essential cookies, which are required to sign consultation teams in to the dashboard. We do not use analytics, advertising, or tracking cookies, and members of the public can view and respond to consultations without any account or non-essential cookies.

10. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, including encrypted data transmission (HTTPS), encrypted database storage, hashed passwords, and role-based access controls so that consultation teams can only access their own projects.

11. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your data rights, please contact us:

Email: privacy@placemakerai.io

12. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO):

Website: ico.org.uk
Telephone: 0303 123 1113