Public records and removal requests

Open Council Network publishes material that UK councils have already made public: agendas, minutes, reports, planning papers, webcasts, and related documents, together with search and summaries that make those records easier to find and follow. This page explains what that means if your name appears, and how we handle requests to remove it.

What we publish

Most of the site is a report of public local-government proceedings. If a council published a name in those papers, for example as a planning applicant, a speaker, a petitioner, an officer, or a councillor, that name may appear here in the matching meeting page, document, transcript, or summary.

We do not compile private contact directories, sell personal data, or collect names from people-search sites. We republish and summarise official records that were already available to the public.

Why names appear

Local government in the UK is conducted in public. Planning applications, committee decisions, and meeting papers are published so neighbours, residents, and the wider public can see what was asked for, who asked, and what was decided. Appearing in that record is a consequence of the public process, not of a separate consent given to us.

Legal basis

We process this material under the UK GDPR on the basis of legitimate interests: operating a service that makes public council proceedings accessible. We do not rely on consent to publish names that already appear in official papers. Withdrawing consent therefore does not require us to remove that material.

The right to erasure is not a general right to be removed from a public record. It does not apply where processing is necessary for freedom of expression and information, including reporting what a public authority has published and discussed. If you object to this processing, we will consider the objection. We will generally continue where there are compelling legitimate grounds that override the request, in particular the public interest in an accurate, complete account of public proceedings.

Laws of other jurisdictions, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act, do not govern this UK service or UK council records.

If you want your name removed

There can be good reasons to want your name taken out of a public record, and there is a straightforward process to do so.

If you want your name removed, you should:

1. Speak to the council directly and ask them to remove or redact your name from their record. They will make the decision on whether there is a legal basis to do so.
2. Once they have done so, tell us, with a link to the page on our site and enough detail for us to find the matching council record.
3. We will then update our system so that any mention of the name is removed from our derived records.

We will not remove a name from this site while it remains in the council’s published papers. We will not take down a meeting page because a person named in the papers objects. We treat a request from a commercial removal service the same as a request from the individual.

Other requests we will consider

Separately, we will:

• correct a factual error in a summary or other text we wrote
• remove information we published that was never in the public papers
• comply with a court order or other binding legal obligation

Account data you gave us directly (for example an email address used to subscribe) is different. You can update or delete much of that from your account. See our privacy policy.

How to contact us

If the council has already removed or redacted your name, email community@opencouncil.network with the page URL and enough detail for us to confirm the change on the council’s record. We will then update our derived records.

If you are asking us to remove a name that is still on the council record, we will point you back to the council. We reply without undue delay, and in any event within one month.

If you are unhappy with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.