Privacy policy

Who we are

Phoenix Taxis is a trading name of Readypay Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 02518342). Our registered office is Northumberland Taxi & Coach Centre, South Albion Retail Park, Albion Way, Blyth, Northumberland NE24 5BW. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) as a data controller, registration number Z1525297.

Our data protection officer is DataGuard (DataCo International UK Limited), who you can contact at privacy@dataguard.co.uk.

For anything else in this policy, contact us:

• Email: contact@phoenixtaxisbl.co.uk, with "Privacy" in the subject line
• Phone: 01670 540222, 24 hours
• Post: Data Protection, Phoenix Taxis, South Albion Retail Park, Albion Way, Blyth NE24 5BW

This policy covers customers and passengers, business account contacts, drivers, passenger assistants, job applicants and visitors to this website. It was last updated on 30 October 2026.

What we collect

Customers and passengers

• Your name, phone number and email address, and your home address if you give it to us.
• Booking details: pickup and drop-off addresses, dates and times, the number of passengers, the vehicle you need, the fare and how you paid.
• Anything you tell us about your needs so we can send the right vehicle, such as a wheelchair, an assistance dog or help getting in and out.
• Recordings of phone calls to our office. We record every call to and from the office.
• If you use the app: your account details, saved places, your location while you book and track a journey, and your journey history.
• Card payments are handled by our payment providers. We do not see or keep your full card number.
• Messages, complaints and feedback you send us.

Business account customers

• The names, work contact details and booking details of the people who travel on the account, and the company's billing details.

Passengers we carry under contracts with councils and the NHS

• For school transport and patient transport, the council or NHS body gives us what we need to do the journey: the passenger's name, pickup and drop-off addresses, times, a contact for a parent, carer or the school, and any needs that affect the journey, such as a wheelchair or medical or behavioural needs.
• For these journeys the council or NHS body decides how the information is used, and its own privacy notice also applies. We use the information only to run the transport and as the contract requires.

Drivers and passenger assistants

• Your name, contact details, date of birth and National Insurance number.
• Your driving licence, private hire or passenger assistant badge, DBS check, right-to-work documents, training records and, for drivers, your vehicle, insurance and MOT details.
• Your journeys, location while working, earnings, payments and any rental agreement with us.
• Complaints and compliments about your work.

Job applicants

• What you give us on the application form or by phone: your name, contact details, town, whether you hold a badge and a DBS check, whether you have a vehicle, and when you are free to work.
• If you apply through a form in one of our Facebook or Instagram adverts, Meta passes us what you enter in it.
• Notes of our conversations with you, and the outcome of your application.

Website visitors

• What you send us through a form on this website.
• If you click Accept on our cookie pop-up, information from our own analytics and advertising cookies about how you use the site. See our cookie policy.
• Visit counts from our website host, Vercel, which uses no cookies. It tells visits apart for a day without storing anything on your device, and shows us only totals such as visits per page.
• On our home page and Book a taxi page, Autocab's booking form collects information through its own cookies whatever you choose in our cookie pop-up; see our cookie policy.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

Data protection law requires a legal basis for each use of personal information. Ours are:

• To take and carry out your booking, send you journey updates by text, app notification or email, take payment, give receipts and invoices, and deal with lost property: to perform our contract with you.
• To carry passengers under council and NHS contracts: to perform those contracts, and because it is necessary for a task the council or NHS body carries out in the public interest.
• To meet our legal duties as a private hire operator licensed by Northumberland County Council: for example keeping booking records, checking that drivers and vehicles are licensed and insured, keeping accounts for HM Revenue & Customs, and answering lawful requests from the police, the council and other authorities.
• To keep passengers and drivers safe, including sharing information with the emergency services where someone's life or health is at risk: our legitimate interests and, in an emergency, the vital interests of the person concerned.
• To record calls, handle complaints, check the quality of our service, investigate incidents and defend legal claims: our legitimate interests in running a safe and reliable service.
• To refuse service to people who have been violent or abusive, or who have not paid: our legitimate interests and those of our drivers.
• To recruit drivers and passenger assistants: to take steps you ask for before a contract, and our legitimate interests in finding suitable people.
• To send you marketing by email or text: only with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• To show adverts to past customers on social media: our legitimate interests. See "Adverts on Facebook and Instagram" below.
• To show adverts to people who have interacted with our Facebook Page or Instagram account: our legitimate interests. To people who have visited this website: your consent, given through the cookie pop-up. See "Adverts on Facebook and Instagram" below.
• Our own analytics and advertising cookies: your consent, given through the cookie pop-up.
• Counting visits without cookies: our legitimate interests in knowing how the site is used, so we can improve it. You can object at any time by clicking Reject in the cookie pop-up.

Health information, children and criminal records

Some information we hold is more sensitive: details of a passenger's health or disability, information about children, and criminal record checks.

• Health and disability: we use it only so the journey can happen safely, for example sending a wheelchair-accessible vehicle or a trained passenger assistant. We rely on your explicit consent where you give it to us yourself, and on the conditions in the Data Protection Act 2018 for safeguarding children and vulnerable people and for public functions where a council or NHS body gives it to us.
• Children: we carry children on school transport for councils. We receive their details from the council, use them only for the journey and never use them for marketing.
• Criminal records: drivers and passenger assistants need an enhanced DBS check. We use the result to decide whether someone can work with us, as our licence and our council contracts require, under the conditions in the Data Protection Act 2018 for safeguarding and for meeting regulatory requirements.

Adverts on Facebook and Instagram

If you have travelled with us as a paying customer in the last 24 months, we may share your phone number or email address with Meta (which runs Facebook and Instagram) so that it can show you Phoenix Taxis adverts. The details are scrambled (hashed) before they leave us. Meta compares them with its own users, shows our adverts to the people who match and then deletes the scrambled details. Meta does not tell us who matched.

We never do this with details of children, school or hospital transport passengers, wheelchair users, or people who travel on a business or council account.

You can opt out at any time by emailing contact@phoenixtaxisbl.co.uk or telling our call takers. We will leave you out of every upload from then on. You have an absolute right to object to direct marketing.

We may also ask Meta to show our adverts to two other groups: people who have interacted with our Facebook Page or Instagram account in the last 12 months, for example by following it, reacting to or commenting on a post, sending us a message or watching one of our videos; and people who have visited this website in the last 6 months and clicked Accept on our cookie pop-up. Meta builds these audiences itself, from activity on Facebook and Instagram and, for website visitors, from the Meta pixel on our site. We do not send Meta any list for this, and we never see who is in these audiences, only totals such as how many people saw or clicked our adverts. Visits to our school transport, hospital and wheelchair pages are never used, because the Meta pixel does not run there.

Meta and Phoenix Taxis are joint controllers for collecting this information and passing it to Meta. Meta takes the main responsibility for it, including answering requests to see or delete it, under its Controller Addendum. What Meta does with it after that is covered by Meta's privacy policy.

To opt out of these adverts:

• Website visits: click Cookie settings at the bottom of any page and choose Reject. From then on your visits are not shared with Meta. Earlier visits can keep you in the audience for up to 6 months unless you also change your Meta settings.
• Facebook and Instagram: tap the three dots on any of our adverts and choose "Hide ad" to hide that advert. To stop all our adverts, go to Ad preferences in Meta's Accounts Centre, find Phoenix Taxis among the advertisers you have seen and hide its adverts. There you can also stop Meta using your activity on other websites, including ours, to choose your adverts.

You can also contact us, but because we cannot see who is in these audiences, Meta's settings are the quickest way to stop them.

Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information. We share it only where we need to:

• Autocab (GPC Computer Software Limited), which provides our booking, dispatch, app and phone systems, including call recording. The booking form on our website is Autocab's and sets its own analytics cookies, and payment cookies from Stripe, whatever you choose in our cookie pop-up; see our cookie policy.
• Our payment providers, which process card payments in the app, online and in our cars.
• Our drivers, who see the pickup, destination, passenger name and contact number for the journeys they do.
• Councils and NHS bodies we carry passengers for, about those journeys.
• Northumberland County Council's licensing team, the police and other authorities when the law requires it.
• Our insurers, solicitors, accountants and auditors.
• Our IT providers, which host our website, email and forms on our behalf.
• Google and Meta, for analytics and adverts, only as described in this policy and our cookie policy.
• A buyer or investor, if the business or part of it is sold, under a duty of confidentiality.

Each of these organisations may only use the information for the purpose we gave it to them, or as the law requires. The exception is the cookies set by Autocab's booking form, which Autocab uses for its own purposes under Autocab's privacy policy.

Transfers outside the UK

Some of our providers, including Google, Meta, Stripe and our website host, may handle information outside the UK, for example in the United States. Where they do, the transfer is protected by UK adequacy regulations or by contract terms approved under UK law.

How long we keep it

• Booking records and call recordings: as long as we need them to deal with queries, complaints and lost property, and to meet our licensing duties. Booking records are kept for up to 6 years for accounting and legal claims.
• Business account and payment records: 6 years after the end of the financial year they relate to, as HM Revenue & Customs requires.
• Drivers and passenger assistants: while you work with us, then 2 years after you stop, as our licence requires, and up to 6 years where tax or legal claims need it.
• Job applicants who do not join us: 12 months after the application, so we can contact you if a role comes up, unless you ask us to delete it sooner.
• Customer details used for adverts: only customers whose last journey was within the last 24 months.
• Facebook and Instagram audiences: Meta keeps people in them for at most 12 months after they last interacted with our Page or Instagram account, and 6 months after their last visit to this website.

We may keep information longer if we need it for a dispute, an investigation or a legal claim.

How we keep it safe

Our booking and dispatch systems run in the cloud and are protected by access controls and passwords. Only staff who need information for their work can see it, and our providers must protect it too. If something goes wrong, we will tell you and the ICO where the law requires.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the information we hold about you;
• correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete your information, where we no longer need it;
• restrict how we use it;
• send information you gave us to you or another organisation in a reusable format;
• stop using it for direct marketing, at any time and without giving a reason;
• stop using it for any purpose based on our legitimate interests, unless we have a strong reason to continue;
• review a decision made about you by a computer alone. We do not make decisions like that.

Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. It is free to make a request, and we will reply within one month. Contact us using the details at the top of this page.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have used your information, please tell us first and we will try to put it right. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF, helpline 0303 123 1113, ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Dash cams

Some drivers who work with us fit dash cams in their own vehicles. Those cameras are run by the vehicle owner, not by Phoenix Taxis. Drivers who use one must display a sign saying recording is in operation and must not record sound. We may receive footage from a vehicle owner to pass to the police or to an insurer.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page when the way we use information changes, and tell you directly if a change significantly affects you. This policy was last updated on 30 October 2026.

If you need this policy in another format, such as large print, please contact us.