What we hold, why we hold it, and how to get it back

Ufirst Services Limited (“Ufirst”, “we”, “us”) is an accessible passenger transport operator registered in England and Wales, with a registered office at Flat 4 St Hillary House, Woolwich Road, London SE2 0AL.

For the personal data described in this policy we are the data controller, except where we carry passengers under a contract with an NHS body or local authority. In those cases the commissioning organisation is usually the controller for the passenger information it passes to us, and we act as processor under a data processing agreement. Where that applies, the commissioner's own privacy information also covers you.

Questions about this policy, or about the data we hold on you, should go to info@ufirstservices.co.uk or 020 8058 9879.

We collect only what we need to arrange, price and safely deliver a journey. That is a narrower set of information than people often expect.

Information you give us when booking

• Your name, phone number and email address, and the same for the passenger if you are booking on someone else's behalf.
• Pick-up and destination addresses, including access notes such as steps, gates or parking restrictions.
• Date, time and any return arrangement.
• The number of passengers, escorts and carers travelling.
• Your organisation, purchase order or cost centre reference, if this is an account booking.

Information about mobility and support needs

To send the right vehicle and brief the crew, we ask about the passenger's mobility requirement, wheelchair type and dimensions, and any support they need on the journey — for example dementia support, a sight or hearing impairment, travelling with oxygen or an assistance dog, or anxiety about travelling.

Most of this is special category data concerning health or disability under UK GDPR, and we treat it accordingly. We deliberately do not ask for diagnoses, medical histories or clinical records. We ask what affects the journey, not what is wrong with you.

Information generated by the journey

• Booking reference, collection and arrival times, allocated crew and vehicle.
• Any incident, delay or non-travel record relating to the journey.
• Waiting time and mileage where these affect the fare or the invoice.

Information collected through this website

• The contents of any form you submit, and the time you submitted it.
• Standard server and security logs kept by our hosting provider, which include IP addresses.
• Your display preferences (text size, contrast, typeface), which are stored in your browser's local storage on your own device and are never transmitted to us.

We do not use advertising or profiling cookies on this website, and we do not track you across other sites.

Under UK GDPR we must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data, and an additional condition for special category data. Ours are set out below.

Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time by contacting us. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing already carried out, and in some cases it will mean we can no longer safely deliver a booked journey — we will tell you if that is the case rather than simply cancelling.

Access is restricted to the people who need it to plan or deliver your journey. In practice that means the booking coordinators who take and schedule the booking, and the driver and passenger assistant allocated to it. Crews receive the operational detail they need for the journey, not a full record.

We share information outside Ufirst only in these circumstances:

• The commissioning organisation. Where an NHS body, local authority or care provider has arranged the journey, we report journey delivery information back to them under our contract.
• Our service providers. Hosting, email, telephony and payment providers, each acting under a contract that restricts them to processing data on our instructions.
• Our payment provider. Where you pay by card, the payment is completed on their hosted checkout. They handle your card details; we never see, enter or store them.
• Safeguarding and emergency services. Where there is a concern about the welfare of a child or an adult at risk, or a genuine emergency during a journey.
• Professional advisers, insurers and auditors. Where necessary to handle a claim, an audit or a legal matter.
• Where the law requires it. In response to a valid legal obligation, court order or regulatory request.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for marketing purposes. We will not add you to a marketing list because you booked a journey.

We keep information only as long as we need it, then delete it. The periods below are our standard retention rules; where a contract with a commissioner specifies different periods, the contract applies.

Where you are a regular passenger, we keep your mobility and access details on your record so you do not have to explain them every time you book. If you would rather we did not, tell us and we will delete them after each journey instead.

We take a deliberately simple approach: hold less, restrict who can see it, and keep card and bank details out of our systems altogether.

• This website is served entirely over HTTPS, and form submissions are encrypted in transit.
• Access to booking records is limited to staff who need it, and removed when someone leaves.
• Card details are never entered on this website, taken by phone or stored by us. Card payments run on our payment provider's hosted checkout.
• Bank details for BACS or Direct Debit are exchanged through your own finance or procurement verification process, never by unverified email.
• Staff are briefed on confidentiality and on recognising requests that may not be genuine.
• Our booking form rejects anything that appears to be a card number, so it cannot be stored or logged by accident.

No system is perfectly secure. If a personal data breach occurs that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and we will tell you directly where the risk to you is high. Where we act as processor for a commissioner, we notify them without undue delay in line with the agreed timescale.

Under UK GDPR you have the following rights over your personal data:

• Access — ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification — have inaccurate data corrected. This matters practically: if your chair has changed, telling us keeps you safe as well as keeping our records right.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data, where we have no overriding legal reason to keep it.
• Restriction — ask us to pause processing while a dispute about accuracy or lawfulness is resolved.
• Objection — object to processing based on our legitimate interests.
• Portability — receive data you gave us in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent — at any time, where consent is our basis for processing.

To exercise any of these, contact info@ufirstservices.co.uk. We will respond within one month. There is no charge, and you do not need to give a reason. If you would find it easier to make the request by phone, call 020 8058 9879 and we will take it that way and confirm in writing.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please raise it with us first so we have the chance to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection, at ico.org.uk.

Where we deliver contracted or commissioned transport, we expect to satisfy the commissioner's own information governance requirements as part of onboarding, rather than treating data protection as a formality bolted on afterwards.

We will:

• Enter into a data processing agreement setting out the purpose, scope, retention and security measures for the data we handle on your behalf.
• Enter into an information sharing agreement where personal data flows in both directions.
• Complete your supplier information governance or data security questionnaire.
• Agree breach notification timescales that meet your own obligations.
• Provide a named contact for subject access and erasure requests relating to contracted journeys.
• Keep processing within the UK unless you have agreed otherwise in writing.
• Limit passenger information passed to crews to what is operationally necessary for the journey.

If your assurance framework requires a specific submission, certification or toolkit response, tell us at the enquiry stage. We will confirm our position accurately rather than leaving you to assume we hold something we do not.

This website does not use advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, and there is no consent banner because there is nothing non-essential to consent to.

We use browser storage in only one way:

• Display preferences. If you set a text size, high contrast mode or the Atkinson Hyperlegible typeface, that choice is saved in your browser's local storage under the key ufirst-a11y. It stays on your device, is never sent to us, and clearing your browser data removes it.

Our hosting provider may set strictly necessary cookies for security and load balancing. These do not identify you and are not used for tracking.

We review this policy at least annually, and whenever we change how we handle personal data. The version number and date shown alongside this document tell you which version you are reading.

Where a change materially affects how we use information about you, we will tell account customers and commissioners directly rather than relying on you noticing a new version here.