Know how your
contribution is used.

Who is responsible

Nick Lawton operates this independent resident campaign and decides how it uses personal information. Contact nick@seadogs.dev about privacy, corrections or your contribution. The campaign opposes Acorn’s proposed development above French Furze and welcomes relevant evidence and differing views.

The campaign is independent of Acorn, Vistry and either council. The forum is hosted by Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc. (CDCK), the company behind Discourse; Discourse ID provides signup and login.

What the website forms collect

The survey asks for a broad area, current view and selected topics. The evidence form asks for a topic, description, and optional date and public source link. Neither asks for a name, email or home address. Text and links can still identify people, so omit unnecessary personal details and sensitive information.

Submissions include a receipt, time, acknowledgment of the sharing notice and a pseudonymous browser identifier to limit repeat survey responses. This code is derived from a cookie, not a verified identity. The forms are not fully anonymous.

Raw submissions are held privately in a Supabase database in London. Survey results are published in aggregate. Evidence enters a private review queue; it does not appear publicly or reach the council automatically.

Purpose, sharing and lawful basis

We use contributions to investigate planning questions, understand concerns, moderate discussion, correct the record and prepare campaign evidence. Relevant material may be checked, compiled and summarised for this website and a collective planning objection. Not every contribution will be used.

We normally publish summaries that omit unnecessary personal details and checked public source links. We will ask permission before reusing an exact quotation or identifiable personal account. If we cannot contact you, silence is not permission. Taking part does not authorise us to name you as a supporter or signatory.

Acknowledging the sharing notice confirms that you have seen this explanation. It is not blanket consent, permission to publish personal details, or a formal planning representation. An objection separately sent to South Hams District Council may become part of its public planning record under its own privacy arrangements.

Our basis for ordinary personal-data processing is legitimate interests: running a proportionate resident discussion and evidence project, maintaining its accuracy and security, and preparing planning representations. We minimise identifying information, consider contributors’ reasonable expectations and review concerns about reuse. You can object using the contact below.

Browser checks and service providers

The website uses an essential signed browser cookie for participation and repeat-response control. It lasts up to one year; its expiry is renewed when the participation service checks results or receives a submission. It is restricted to this site, inaccessible to page scripts and marked secure on HTTPS. Clearing it can affect repeat-response checks.

For spam throttling, the application temporarily stores a hash derived from the network address using a salt that changes daily. These records are kept for no more than 48 hours. The application database does not store the raw network address. Hosting providers may still have technical logs.

Vercel hosts the website and Supabase stores form submissions. The website itself uses no advertising or analytics cookies. Providers may process technical records to operate and protect their services. Their infrastructure, support and subprocessors may involve processing outside the UK; the London database location does not mean all processing stays in the UK.

See Vercel’s privacy information and Supabase’s privacy information. Contact Nick about the providers used and applicable international-processing arrangements. Discourse has separate cookie and account processing, described below.

How long website submissions are kept

Private raw survey and evidence rows are scheduled for deletion once they are 24 months old through a daily database cleanup. You can request earlier deletion using your receipt. Removing a raw row also removes it from results calculated from retained submissions, so displayed totals may change over time.

Checked non-identifying summaries and public-source links may remain while relevant to the planning proposal, any appeal and the documented history of the case. They are reviewed when the case changes or a correction is raised. This is separate from retaining the original private response.

The raw-row schedule does not describe provider security logs or backup retention, which follow the providers’ arrangements. It cannot remove copies already taken by others or records held by the council after a separate submission.

The public Discourse forum

The forum can be read without an account. Posts, replies and public profile information can be read, copied or indexed by others. Registration does not verify residency, and a username does not make account-linked activity anonymous.

Discourse processes account and activity information to provide the forum and Discourse ID. Nick and authorised moderators can review contributions and moderation records. First posts from new members are held for review; later posts are not necessarily checked before publication. Provider security and abuse checks may use automated tools. This does not verify a post’s accuracy or mean every optional AI feature is enabled.

The website’s 24-month raw-form deletion schedule does not apply to forum posts or accounts. Forum material is retained as part of the discussion and planning record while relevant, subject to privacy requests and moderation. Deleting a post or account may leave revisions, administrative records or backups; do not assume instant erasure of every copy.

Relevant forum contributions may be reviewed and summarised for the campaign as explained above. Do not post others’ personal information or confidential correspondence. Direct messages and email differ from public posts but should not be assumed to be end-to-end encrypted.

Read the current Discourse privacy notice, Discourse ID terms and our community guidelines. The provider’s account, cookie, international-processing and retention arrangements are separate from Nick’s decisions about campaign evidence.

Your choices and rights

Participation is optional. You can read public material without submitting a form or opening a forum account. The sharing acknowledgment is required to submit a form so intended use is clear before collection.

You can ask Nick for access to information held about you, correction, deletion or restriction of its use. Which rights apply depends on the information, purpose and applicable law. We may need enough detail to locate a record and check a request; a form receipt or forum post link helps. Do not send extra sensitive information unnecessarily.

You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests. Email nick@seadogs.dev with the relevant contribution or use. We will consider your circumstances and explain the response. Removal is not an unconditional guarantee where another lawful reason requires retention.

You can also raise a concern with the Information Commissioner’s Office. For Discourse’s own account processing, use the rights and contact routes in its notice.

Material changes to this notice will be dated. We will explain a materially different intended use before applying it to contributions.