Home to school app and driver app

Who we are

Elite Services Limited runs the home to school coaches and both apps. We decide how your information is used, so in data protection law we are the controller of it. Our registered office is Unit 3 Adswood Industrial Estate, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

For anything about your information, email schooltransport@eliteservicesltd.com or ring the school transport office on 0161 480 0617.

What the parent app collects, and why

About you

• Your name, email address and mobile number. You can also add a second phone number and your home address.
• Your password. We never see it: our database provider stores it scrambled and checks it for us.
• How you are related to each child on your account, and whether you are the main contact for them.

About your child

• Their name, the name they prefer to be called, date of birth, gender, home address, school and year group.
• A head and shoulders photo, so the driver and the office can recognise them.
• Whether they have medical or additional (SEN) needs, and what you tell us about them. Health information is treated as especially sensitive in law. We ask for it only so we can look after your child safely on the coach, and it is shown only to the office and to the driver on that child’s run.
• Whether a brother or sister already travels with us, and their name.
• A second contact, if you give one: their name, relationship to the child, phone number, email address and address.
• Your agreement to the travel conditions, with your name and your child’s name typed as signatures, and the date.

Journeys, taps and where the coach is

• Your child’s booking: the route, the stop they get on at, the stop they get off at, the days they travel and the dates it runs from and to.
• Their travel card. We do not keep the number printed or stored on the card. We keep a scrambled version of it that cannot be turned back into the card number, which is enough to recognise the card when it is tapped.
• Every tap on the coach: the time, whether they were getting on or off, which run and coach it was, whether the tap was accepted, and where the coach was at that moment. If a driver boards a child by hand because a card will not read, we record that and the reason.
• Where the coach is while it is on your child’s run, so the app can show it on a map. That is the coach’s position, not your child’s and not yours.

The parent app never asks for your phone’s location. It does not read it, send it or store it. The coach on the map is reported by the coach.

Using the app

• If you switch notifications on, a code from Apple or Google that lets us send a notification to that phone, and which phone system it is. We use it to tell you when your child has got on or off, when the coach is running late, and when the office sends a message. Switching notifications off, signing out or deleting your account removes the code.
• Messages from the office, and which of them you have opened, so the office knows who has seen an important one. The app does not send messages to the office: “Call the office” and “Send an email” on the Account tab hand over to your phone’s own dialler or email app.
• Your application and any place you are offered, including what the office asks you to change before they decide.

Payments

The app shows a record of what has been paid. It does not take payments. If you pay an admin fee by card you are taken to a page run by Gala Technology, our card payment provider; your card details go to Gala and we never see or store them. Direct Debit is not in the app: if a Direct Debit is set up in future, the bank details will be taken by the payment provider and not held by us.

Why we are allowed to use it

• To provide the transport you have asked for. Your details, your child’s details, the booking, the taps, payments and service messages are all needed to perform our contract with you.
• To keep children safe. The record of who was on which coach and when is kept in our legitimate interest, and in yours, in knowing where a child is.
• Medical and additional needs. We rely on the explicit consent you give when you enter them on the application form. You can withdraw it by telling the office, though we may then not be able to carry your child safely.
• Notifications. Your consent, given by switching them on, which you can take back at any time in the app or in your phone’s settings.
• Accounts and insurance. Keeping payment records is a legal obligation.

Who else handles it

We use these companies to run the service. Each handles only what it needs to do its job for us, under a contract that requires it to protect the information and to use it for nothing else.

The database that holds your account, your child’s record and the tap history is in London. Where information reaches a company outside the United Kingdom, our contract with that company carries the safeguards the law requires for sending it there.

We share a child’s name, photo, stop and any medical or additional needs with the driver of their coach, on the manifest for that run. We share with a child’s school only what the school needs to confirm who travels, or where there is a safeguarding concern. We may share information with our insurers, our accountants or the authorities where the law requires it.

The map in the app is drawn by your phone’s own map service: Apple Maps on an iPhone, Google Maps on an Android phone. We never sell anyone’s information, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

How long we keep it

• Coach positions: 14 days, then a nightly job deletes them.
• Taps: 13 months, then a nightly job deletes them, so a full school year is always available if a question comes up about a journey.
• Your account and your child’s record: while your child travels with us, and afterwards only while we still need them, for instance to answer a question about a journey or to meet accounting and insurance rules. Ask us to remove them sooner and we will, keeping only what we are obliged to keep.
• Payments: six years after the end of the financial year they fall in, as tax rules require.

Deleting your account

In the app, open the Account tab and choose Delete my account. That removes your sign-in, your password and your notifications straight away. Your child’s travel record stays with the office, because the school and the coach still need to know who travels and because the tap history is a safety record. Ask us and we will delete anything we are not required to keep.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of the information we hold about you or your child, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict how we use it, or object to how we use it. You can see and change most of your own details in the app. Email schooltransport@eliteservicesltd.com and we will reply within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

Children

The app is for parents and carers. It is not designed for children and it is not aimed at them, so children do not have accounts of their own and cannot sign in. Everything the app holds about a child is entered by their parent or carer, or by our office. Your child types their own name on the application form only to show they have read the travel conditions with you.

The driver app

Our drivers use a separate app on a company tablet. It is not on public sale and parents never use it. It holds:

• The driver’s PIN, stored scrambled, and which tablet they are signed in on, so the office can switch a lost tablet off.
• The travel cards it reads, as the same scrambled codes, with the time, the run and the coach.
• The name, photo, stop and any medical or additional needs of the children booked on that run, so the driver knows who should be on the coach and what to do if a child is unwell.
• The tablet’s location while a run is open, with the driver’s permission, so the office and parents can see where the coach is and so each tap is recorded with a place. It stops when the run ends. It is the coach that is being located, not the driver personally, and the office sees it only through the run.

Drivers are told about this separately as part of their employment, and the same retention periods above apply.

Changes

If we change this policy we will say so here and, if the change matters to you, in the app. This page is the version that applies.