Privacy notice

Who we are

Instructor Office is run by Clayton Robinson and Tony Mihill in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. If you have a question about your data, email hello@myinstructoroffice.co.uk or use our contact form.

What this notice covers

There are two kinds of people whose data is involved. Instructors create an account and use the app. Pupils and parents are the people an instructor teaches, and whose details the instructor chooses to put in the app.

If you are an instructor

• What we hold: your email address, your sign-in details, and everything you save in the app, such as your pupils, diary, notes, expenses and settings.
• Referrals and trainee access: if you join with another instructor’s invite link, we record who invited you so they can get their free month. If you ask for free trainee access, we keep your PRN and trainee licence expiry date to check and run it.
• Why: to run your account, keep your data the same on all your devices, and let you sign in again.
• Where: on your device, and in your private account on our database provider, Supabase, in a data centre in Ireland. Photos and files you add, such as receipts, pass photos and photos in messages, are kept in your private account too, so they are on all your devices. We also keep a daily copy of your account for 14 days so we can put things back if something goes wrong.
• Who can see it: you. Each account can only read its own data. We do not sell your data or use it for advertising.
• Emails: we send you only the emails that run your account, such as confirming your address or resetting your password.

If you are a pupil or a parent

Your instructor decides what to record about you and is responsible for it. Instructor Office stores it on the instructor’s behalf so they can run their lessons. If you want to see, correct or delete what an instructor holds about you, please ask your instructor first.

Pupil and parent pages are opened from a private link. The link contains only what your instructor chose to share. It does not include a licence number, address or phone number. Anyone with the link can read it, so please do not share it.

If you tap “I’ve booked my test” in the pupil app, the test date, time and centre you type are sent to your instructor, who can add them to their diary. If your instructor is part of a driving school, the school sees the test time in your instructor’s diary, but not your name.

Optional services you turn on

Some features send information to other services only when you use them. For example, recording a debrief or importing a file sends the text to an AI service to produce the summary. Debrief and voice assistant recordings are turned into text on your phone or computer first, so the recording itself is never sent. The one exception is importing your pupils by speaking them in: that recording is sent to OpenAI to be turned into text. Map and search features contact map providers. You choose when to use these.

How long we keep it

We keep your data while your account is open. You can delete pupils or data in the app at any time. If you want your account and its data deleted, you can do it yourself in the app (see “Deleting your account” below), or ask us through our contact form and we will do it.

Location when you are on your way

Instructors. The app collects your phone’s precise location only when you use a tracking feature, and only for that purpose:

• On the way. When you tap “On the way” on a lesson we collect your location until you arrive or stop. In the App Store and Google Play apps this continues while the app is in the background, and the phone shows that location is in use. We use your position to estimate an arrival time from the distance to the pickup address, and to detect that you have arrived.
• Automatic alert when close (optional, off until you switch it on). From 30 minutes before a booked lesson that has a pickup address, the app checks how far you are from that address. When the lesson is 15 minutes or less away and you are within two miles, “On the way” starts by itself and the pupil is told. The checking stops when you arrive or the lesson window passes.
• Share live location (15 or 20 minutes). You choose how long a pupil can see where you are. They follow a private link you send them. It stops by itself when the time is up.

Pupils sharing their location on test day (optional). On the day of a driving test, a pupil can choose in their pupil app to share their location with their own instructor while they are out on the test. It can only be switched on by the pupil, only from 75 minutes before the test, and it lasts one hour (the pupil can add up to another hour). The pupil or the instructor can stop it at any time, and it stops by itself when the time is up. In the App Store and Google Play apps it continues while the phone is locked, and the phone shows that location is in use. Only that pupil’s instructor can see it. We use it to show the instructor where the car is, to tell the instructor if the car has stopped for five minutes away from the test centre, and to save the route driven to that pupil’s record in the instructor’s app, with the places the car stopped, so they can practise it. The positions are deleted from our server as soon as the route has been saved to the instructor’s app, and in any case after 30 days. The instructor’s saved routes are kept in their account like their other records.

Pupils. A pupil only ever sees their own instructor’s position, and only through a private link or their own pupil app. For “On the way”, the map appears only once the instructor is within two miles of the pickup and at least a quarter of a mile from where they set off, so a pupil cannot see where the instructor has been. For a timed share the pupil sees the instructor’s position until the time the instructor chose runs out.

Deleting it. The position is deleted as soon as the trip ends, the instructor arrives, or the timed share ends. Trip and share records (without any position) are deleted after 30 days. Location is never used for advertising, never sold, and never shared with anyone except that pupil.

Notifications

If a pupil uses the pupil app and allows notifications, we store a notification token for that pupil’s phone so the instructor’s messages can reach it: “on the way”, “nearly there” and “arrived”, lesson reminders the instructor switches on (and whether the pupil confirmed), lessons booked, moved or cancelled, new lesson notes, free lesson times they offer, and messages they send. The notifications are sent through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging. The token is deleted when the pupil signs out of the app, if it stops working, or if the account is deleted.

Services that process data for us

• Supabase: database and sign-in (Ireland).
• Google: maps and address search only; Firebase notifications.
• AI service (Anthropic): only when you record a debrief, import a file or photo, read your pupils out loud to import them, use the voice assistant, or ask a question in the Ask us help chat (which sends your question with a short summary of your account: pupils’ first names and surname initials, your next two weeks of lessons and who owes you money; pupils who said no to AI are never named). Debrief recordings and voice requests are turned into text on your own device (in the iPhone app by Apple’s built-in speech recognition, and the recording stays on your phone; in a web browser by the browser’s own speech recognition, which in Chrome is Google’s). Only the text is sent to the AI service, which writes things up. The content you choose to send is processed to give you the result and is not used by us for anything else.
• OpenAI: only when you import your pupils by speaking them in (a one-off when you move over from another app). Each recording is sent to OpenAI to be turned into text, then the text goes to the AI service above to be read. It is used only for this and nothing is kept by us.
• Stripe: card payments, only if the instructor connects their own Stripe account. We never see card numbers.

Data sent outside the UK. Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are based in the United States, so when you use the features above, what is sent for that feature (text, a photo, a recording or a map search) is processed there. Each of them handles it under their own data processing terms for business customers, which include the safeguards UK law requires for sending personal data abroad (the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, or the UK-US data bridge for companies signed up to it), and they do not use it to train their AI. Supabase keeps your account in Ireland, which UK law treats as giving the same protection as the UK.

Deleting your account

Instructors can delete their account and all its data in the app: More, then Account, then “Delete account”. This removes the account, pupils, diary, notes, money records, files and settings, and cannot be undone. You can also ask us through our contact form and we will do it for you.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct, export or delete the personal data we hold about you, and to object to how we use it. If you are unhappy, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Paying for Instructor Office

If you subscribe, payment is handled by Stripe on our website. Stripe receives your card details directly; we never see or store your card number. We keep a record of your subscription (plan, status, renewal date and Stripe customer reference) so the apps know your account is active.

Pupils paying their instructor by card

An instructor can link their own Stripe account so pupils can pay them by card in the pupil app. The pupil types their card details on Stripe’s own page, never in our apps, and the money goes straight to the instructor’s Stripe account. We do not take, hold or pass on the money, and we take no fee. We store which Stripe account belongs to the instructor and, for each payment, the amount, the date and which of their pupils paid, so it can be added to that pupil’s lesson account. The instructor’s Stripe account is between them and Stripe, on Stripe’s terms.

Messages you send us

If you use the contact form, we keep your name, email, optional phone number and message so we can reply. We delete them after 12 months unless you are a customer and the message is about your account.

Cookies and storage

Our website and apps only use storage that is needed for them to work: keeping you signed in, remembering your display settings, and saving your work on your device until it is backed up. We do not use advertising or analytics cookies, so there is nothing to accept.

Instructors and pupil data

For the pupils and parents you add, you are the controller and Instructor Office is your processor. We only use that data to provide the app to you, keep it confidential, protect it, use the processors listed above, help you answer requests from pupils, and delete or return it when you close your account. These data processing terms form part of our terms.

Some pupils are 16 or 17. We collect only what is needed for lessons, never use pupil data for marketing, and pupil location is only ever shared by the pupil’s own choice on test day.

Driving schools

If an instructor joins a driving school with the school’s PIN, the school can see: the instructor’s name and email, their diary as anonymous blocks (lesson, driving test, mock test or busy, with times), their badge, insurance, MOT and standards check dates, and anything the instructor chooses to send the school, such as a mock test result or a photo of an assessment. The school never sees pupils’ names or details from the instructor’s diary or records, and cannot change them. The instructor sees this list before joining and can leave at any time.

When a school sends a new pupil enquiry to its instructors, the pupil’s name and contact details are kept so that only the school and the instructor who takes the enquiry can see them. Other instructors see only the area and when the pupil can do lessons. For these enquiries the school is the controller. The school’s name, colour and logo are shown in the pupil app of its instructors’ pupils.

Changes

If we change this notice in a way that matters, we will update the date above and tell account holders.