Privacy Notice

This notice covers the Driving Instructor Assistant app (iPhone and Android) and the web portal at app.drivinginstructorapps.co.uk. It explains what information the app holds, who can see it, and what you can do about it.

The short version (read this first)

If you're a learner, this part is for you.

• What it is. Your driving instructor uses this app to run your lessons. You use it to see your lessons, your progress and what you owe, to message your instructor and to ask Elly questions.
• Who's in charge of your information. Your driving school, or your instructor if they work for themselves. They decide what's recorded about you. We (Driving Instructor Assistant) run the app for them.
• What's in it. Your name, contact details, date of birth, pickup address, lessons, lesson notes, progress scores, test dates and results, payments, messages, and any voice notes your instructor records about your lessons.
• Who can see it. You, your instructor and your school's owner. Office staff see only what they need to book lessons and take payments. A parent or guardian only sees your progress if progress-sharing is switched on for them. Nobody else.
• Elly (the assistant) uses AI. When you ask Elly something, we send her your own lesson information so she can answer. She can't see other learners. She can't book or change anything unless you tap to confirm.
• We never sell your information. There are no adverts and no tracking for marketing, and the app doesn't use your location.
• You're in control. You can ask to see everything we hold about you, ask us to fix something that's wrong, or ask us to delete it. Email privacy@drivinginstructorapps.co.uk or tell your instructor.
• It's a test version. The app is being tried out by a small group of instructors. Your instructor should only add you if you're happy to take part.
• If you're under 18, you can ask a parent, guardian or someone you trust to help you with any of this.

The full details are below.

1. Who we are

Driving Instructor Assistant is run by Phil Cowley, a sole trader trading as Driving Instructor Assistant, 6 Middle Budleigh Meadow, Newton Abbot, TQ12 1UH.

• ICO registration number: ZC278622 (Phil Cowley, trading as Driving Instructor Assistant). You can check it on the ICO register at https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Search.
• Contact: privacy@drivinginstructorapps.co.uk

Driving Instructor Assistant is a separate business from Support Driving School Ltd and from Cowley's School of Motoring. Those schools use the app as customers, in the same way as any other school.

Who decides what happens to your information

There are two kinds of decision-maker. The law calls them the "controller" and the "processor".

At a franchise school such as Support Driving School, the franchisee instructor takes their own lesson payments and keeps their pupils if they leave.

If your question is about how your school or instructor uses your information (for example, why a note was written), ask them first. We'll help them answer. You can always contact us directly too.

2. What we collect

2.1 Instructors, school owners and office staff

• Account details: name, email address, phone number, the school you belong to, and your role (owner, office, instructor).
• Instructor profile: ADI number and badge expiry, car, home postcode, the postcode areas you cover, working hours, weekly target hours, whether you're taking new pupils, a short bio, and the date you started.
• Franchise details (Support only): franchise fee amounts and whether they've been paid. Only the owner sees these.
• Bank details for "Pay by bank transfer", if you choose to offer it: account name, sort code and account number. These are stored encrypted. See section 9.
• Expenses and receipt photos, if you choose to record them: the date, category, amount and an optional note, and an optional photo of the receipt, which we shrink and store against your account. Only you can see these. See section 4.
• Your diary and work: lessons, blocks, holds, tasks, lesson notes, voice notes, messages, payments you record, and price lists and lesson terms.
• Sign-in and device information: see section 2.4.

2.2 Learners

Your school or instructor adds you. They may record:

• About you: first and last name, date of birth, email address, phone number, home postcode, pickup address, manual or automatic, the date you started, and any hours you'd already had.
• Lessons: booked, moved, cancelled and completed lessons. Lesson requests you send. Any cancellation charges.
• Lesson records: the goals for each lesson and whether you met them, how confident you said you felt before the lesson (0 to 10), anything you said you were worried about, notes made during the lesson, the skills covered, skill scores (1 to 5), the reflective log you write with your instructor, and the focus for next time.
• Voice notes: short audio recordings your instructor makes about a lesson. If your instructor's phone turned the recording into text, we keep that text too, along with a short summary written by the AI. You only see a voice note if your instructor shares it with you.
• Progress: scores across the driving syllabus, a "test readiness" estimate, and trophies.
• Tests: theory and practical test dates, test centre, DVSA booking reference, and results (including the driving faults marked on your test report, if your instructor enters them).
• Checks: the date your eyesight and driving licence were last checked. We never store the DVLA licence check code.
• Money: prices, your lesson credit, what you owe, payments recorded (cash, bank transfer or card reader), and any "I've paid by bank transfer" messages you send.
• Messages between you and your instructor or the school office, inside the app.
• Your instructor's private notes: a short private summary only your instructor and the school owner can see. Office staff can't see it.

Please don't put health information in the app (for example anxiety, dyslexia or medical conditions). Tell your instructor in person if they need to know. The app has no special field for health information, and instructors are asked to keep it out of notes (see the pilot terms).

2.3 Parents and guardians

If your instructor adds you as the parent or guardian of a learner, we hold your name, your relationship to the learner, your email address and phone number, whether you pay for lessons, and whether you can see the learner's progress. If you have an email address on the record, you get your own read-only login.

2.4 Everyone who signs in

• Sign-in codes: your email address, a scrambled copy of the 6-digit code (never the code itself), when it was sent and the IP address it was requested from. We use these to stop people guessing codes.
• Sessions: a scrambled copy of your login token, the device name, the browser or app details, your IP address, and when you last used the app. This lets you see your signed-in devices and sign them out.
• Push notification token: a code from Apple or Google that lets us send notifications to your phone, plus the phone type and name.
• Notifications we've sent you.
• App settings: for example your diary view and which welcome tips you've seen.
• Activity (audit) log: see section 9.
• Feedback you send through "Send feedback": what you write, the type (bug, idea or confusing), and, if you choose, a screenshot. We also add technical details automatically: app version and build, phone or browser type, operating system, device model, which screen you were on, your school and your role. A screenshot shows whatever was on your screen, so check it before you send it.

2.5 Enquiries (school owners and office)

When a school types or pastes in an enquiry from someone who wants lessons, we keep the contact's name and the learner's name, their email and phone number, the message they sent, and the details picked out of it (postcode, manual or automatic, availability, age or date of birth). We also keep the enquiry's status, a waiting-list place if they're added, and, if they asked for one, an instructor gender preference. The gender preference is office-only and is never used to match instructors.

2.6 What we don't collect

• No card details (there are no card payments in the app during the pilot).
• No location tracking. The app doesn't ask for your location.
• No advertising or marketing analytics, and no tracking cookies. The web portal only sets the cookie that keeps you signed in.
• No passwords. You sign in with a code sent to your email.

3. Why we use it, and our legal basis

Where your school or instructor is the controller, they choose the legal basis. These are the defaults the app is designed for. Your school's own privacy notice may say more.

Where we are the controller:

Consent. We don't rely on consent for the main service. Your phone asks your permission before the app can send notifications, use the microphone (for voice notes and talking to Elly) or use speech recognition. You can change these at any time in your phone's settings. The app doesn't send marketing. If a school ever wants to, it will need its own consent from you.

No automated decisions. The app doesn't make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects without a person involved. Matching an enquiry to an instructor follows fixed rules (area covered, manual or automatic, free time). Office staff make the final choice.

4. Who can see your information

We'll share information with authorities (for example the police or HMRC) only where the law requires it.

At a franchise school: if a franchisee instructor leaves, they keep their pupils. The school will arrange how your records move with them. Contact us and we'll help the school and the instructor move the records.

5. Our service providers (sub-processors)

These companies run parts of the app for us. They may only use your information to provide their service to us.

Your phone's speech recognition. If you talk to Elly instead of typing, your phone's built-in speech recognition (Apple's on iPhone, Google's on Android) turns your words into text. Depending on your phone, this may happen on the phone or on Apple's or Google's servers, under their terms. We only receive the text. Where your phone supports it, the app asks for recognition to happen on the phone itself.

We'll tell schools and independent instructors before we add or change a provider.

6. Elly, the AI assistant

What Elly is. Elly is the assistant inside the app. Staff and learners can ask her questions ("When's my next lesson?", "Who owes money this week?"). She also suggests actions, such as booking a lesson or sending a message.

What's sent to the AI. When you ask Elly something, our server builds a summary of only the information you're already allowed to see and sends it, with your question, to Anthropic's Claude AI.

• For a learner: your name, your instructor's name, your lessons, credit and what you owe, your progress scores, your next test, your instructor's free times (times only), your school's prices and lesson terms, and your last lesson's notes.
• For an instructor: their own pupils' names, postcode area (for example "TQ12", not the full address), manual or automatic, hours taught, credit, amounts owed, next and last lesson, last lesson's notes, and tests with results and faults. Also their own diary gaps.
• For owners and office: the same information for the school, plus enquiries (name, status and a short summary) and the waiting list. Franchise fees go to the owner only. The full text of an enquiry is sent only if staff ask Elly about that specific enquiry.
• Never sent: email addresses, phone numbers, full addresses or pickup addresses, dates of birth, bank details, expenses, receipt photos, parents' details, or anyone outside what you can see.

Voice-note summaries. The audio of a voice note is not sent to the AI. If the instructor's phone produced a text version, that text is sent so the AI can write a 1 to 3 sentence summary.

People stay in charge. Elly can't book, cancel, charge, pay or message anyone by herself. Any suggestion appears as a card showing exactly what will happen. Nothing happens until a person taps to confirm, and the app then runs the same checks as if you'd done it yourself. Elly can be wrong, so check her answers.

Retention and training. We don't keep a copy of your conversations with Elly on our servers. Anthropic doesn't use information sent through its business service to train its AI models. We are asking Anthropic for zero data retention, which means it wouldn't store what we send at all. Until that's confirmed, Anthropic keeps what we send only for a short period, for safety and abuse monitoring, under its business terms, and then deletes it.

If the AI isn't available, Elly answers from simple built-in rules instead, and nothing is sent to Anthropic.

7. How long we keep it

These are the defaults. Your school or independent instructor can ask for shorter periods. During the pilot, we delete or anonymise information by hand when its time is up. Automatic deletion will be built before the app launches publicly.

8. Your rights

You have the right to:

• see a copy of the information held about you
• have anything wrong or incomplete corrected
• have your information deleted where it's no longer needed (money records may have to be kept for tax law, but without your name)
• restrict or object to how it's used
• get your information in a format you can take elsewhere
• withdraw any permission you've given (for example notifications or the microphone, in your phone's settings)

How to ask. Email privacy@drivinginstructorapps.co.uk, or ask your instructor or school. Where your school or independent instructor is in charge of your information, we'll pass your request to them the same day and help them deal with it. We may need to check it's really you, usually by replying from the email address on your account. We'll answer within one month, and there's no charge in most cases.

During the pilot, we fulfil requests to see or delete a learner's information by running a secure admin process ourselves. Deleting a learner removes their name, contact details, messages, progress, reflections, tests, lesson records, voice notes, trophies and login. Payments and credit records stay, attached to "Erased pupil", for the accounts.

Young learners. If you're under 18, these are still your rights. A parent or guardian can help you. We'll usually deal with you directly, because you're old enough to understand your own information.

Complaints. If you're unhappy, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.

9. How we keep it safe

• Sign-in without passwords. You sign in with a 6-digit code emailed to you. The code works once, expires after 10 minutes and locks after 5 wrong tries. There are limits on how many codes can be sent.
• Your information stays inside your school. Every request is checked against who you are and what your role allows. Anything you're not allowed to see behaves as if it doesn't exist.
• Encryption. Everything is encrypted between the app and our servers. Bank details have an extra layer of encryption (AES-256), office staff can never see them, and every time they're viewed or changed is logged. Information the app saves on your phone for offline use is encrypted, with the key kept in your phone's secure keychain. It's wiped when you sign out and excluded from phone backups.
• Activity log. Every change made by a signed-in user, and every time someone opens a pupil's record, progress, payments or messages, is logged with who did it, what they opened and when (not the content). The log can't be edited. The school owner can see it.
• Money records can't be rewritten. The credit and payment record can only be added to, never edited or deleted.
• Short notifications. Lock-screen notifications don't include lesson details or amounts. Some show the sender's first name, for example "New message from Dan".
• Web protections. The portal uses modern browser security settings (Content Security Policy and HSTS) and blocks requests from other websites.
• App Store and Play reviewers use a separate demo school with made-up people. They never see real pupils.

No system is completely secure. If something goes wrong that puts your information at risk, we'll tell your school or instructor straight away (within 24 hours of finding out), and tell you and the ICO where the law requires.

10. This is a pilot

From October 2026, the app is being tested by a small group of instructors at Support Driving School, Cowley's School of Motoring and three independent instructors, and some of their pupils. During the pilot:

• Instructors keep using their usual system alongside this app.
• There are no card payments in the app. Payments are recorded by hand.
• Instructors should only add pupils who have agreed to try the app.
• Features may change, and we may contact pilot instructors for feedback.

When the pilot ends, schools and instructors can keep using the app or ask for their information to be returned or deleted. See the pilot terms.

11. Changes to this notice

We'll update this notice when the app or the way we use information changes, and change the date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

12. Contact

Driving Instructor Assistant: Phil Cowley, sole trader, trading as Driving Instructor Assistant Email: privacy@drivinginstructorapps.co.uk Address: 6 Middle Budleigh Meadow, Newton Abbot, TQ12 1UH

Last updated: 20 October 2026