A Kinross-shire councillor has written to local authority planning chiefs questioning why comments on contentious applications are being deleted from its website after a year.

Writing in the Kinross Community Council Newsletter, Scottish Conservative councillor Callum Purves said he had asked officers to “review and reconsider this policy change” which he reckons was introduced without any warning last year.

Cllr Purves says he was first made aware of the change by the Kinross-shire Civic Trust, which has been involved in number of disputes over controversial applications recently.

The change means concerned members of the public can no longer see what others said about historic applications when fresh ones are filed seeking permission to develop the same site or check what conditions people wanted to see applied to earlier consents.

Cllr Purves said: “Towards the end of last year, I was made aware by the Kinross-shire Civic Trust of a change to council policy in relation to comments on planning applications made by individuals and organisations.

“It now means that once an application has been completed, the comments on that application will be removed from the public access portal on the council website.

“This is extremely concerning given that many planning applications can often be made on the same site over a number of years or developers can seek changes to the conditions imposed on them through another application.

“It is therefore extremely important that people are able to see comments on previous planning applications from individuals, groups and statutory consultees.

“This change of policy was made without any consultation and the justification that has been given is that the council is simply trying to adhere to their new obligations under General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

“Given that the only personal information on any comments is someone’s name and all other details are redacted, I think perhaps that this is an overinterpretation of the regulations.

“Planning is a quasi-judicial process and people know that when they comment on a planning application their comments will be open to public scrutiny.

“In my view, it is not acceptable that this transparency in the planning process should end after a period of time. I have therefore written to officers asking them to review and reconsider this policy change.”

A PKC spokesperson responded: “The alteration to the council’s procedures has been in order to comply with changes to the GDPR which came into effect on May 25, 2018. One of the principles of GDPR is to ensure that records are kept for no longer than is necessary.

“Therefore it was decided that, once the planning decision was made, all letters of representation would be removed from public view on our public access planning portal, and after one year would be destroyed.

“To date, since around November 2018, relevant representations have been removed from public view but have not been destroyed.

“We have advised Cllr Purves that, having considered our retention timescales further, letters of representation will, going forward, be retained for four years before being removed/destroyed.

“This will allow time for: expiration of planning permission (three years), submission of planning permission renewal, as well as for an appeal to the Local Review Body and/or the Scottish Government and determination, and any appeal to the Court of Session.

“It should also be noted that all letters of representation are summarised and subsequently assessed in the report of handling, and this document, and the decision notice for each application, will always remain available on public access – as required by planning legislation.”