Privacy notice
This site is a set of plain pages. It has no accounts and no ad networks; one small card, labelled “Ad”, for our sister site bigbus.tours shows once and loads nothing from that site unless you press it. It uses Google Analytics to count visits, which sets cookies, and it has a Kiwitaxi booking box that loads only if you press its button. Here is exactly what the site does and does not do with information about you.
Updated
In short
- Google Analytics sets cookies to count visits. The Kiwitaxi box sets more, only if you press “Show Kiwitaxi prices”.
- No advertising scripts. Google Analytics runs on every page; the Kiwitaxi box brings its own analytics, only after you press its button.
- Your theme and direction choices stay in your own browser.
- The door-to-door planner sends your address only to postcodes.io and TfL, never to us.
- If you email us, we use your message only to reply and to fix the site.
On this page
Who is responsible
Gatwick Routes, the publisher of gatwick.express, is the data controller for any personal information the site handles. You can reach us about anything on this page through the contact form.
Cookies
We do not set any cookies ourselves. Until you press the button on a Kiwitaxi booking box, no cookie is set at all, first-party or third-party, so there is no cookie banner to click through. Pressing that button is your choice to load the box, and it does set cookies, as the next section explains.
The Kiwitaxi booking box
The private transfers page, the route pages, one guide and the train or transfer calculator carry a box headed “Private transfer prices from Kiwitaxi” or “Check a live Kiwitaxi price”. It is how the site earns money (see how we make money). Until you press its “Show Kiwitaxi prices” button it is plain text from this site: nothing is fetched from another company and no cookie is set.
When you press the button:
- Your browser loads a script from
tpscr.com, run by Travelpayouts, the affiliate network, and Kiwitaxi's booking form fromwidget.kiwitaxi.com. The script also tellstpo.gg, a Travelpayouts address, that the box was shown, with the address of the page you are on. - Like any site your browser fetches something from, Travelpayouts and Kiwitaxi receive your IP address, basic details of your browser and the page you are on.
- The Travelpayouts script sets two cookies on this site's address, named
_sp_idand_sp_sesfollowed by a short code. They belong to Snowplow, the analytics tool that script uses._sp_sesends after 30 minutes without activity;_sp_idis set to last up to two years. Inside its booking form, Kiwitaxi may set cookies of its own. - What you type into the form, from places and dates to your contact details if you book, goes to Kiwitaxi. The form runs in its own frame, and this site cannot read it.
Travelpayouts and Kiwitaxi handle this under their own policies: Travelpayouts privacy policy (opens in a new tab), Travelpayouts cookie policy (opens in a new tab) and Kiwitaxi privacy policy (opens in a new tab). You can delete the two cookies by clearing this site's data in your browser. If you never press the button, none of this happens.
What your browser stores
Two small settings are saved in your browser's local storage, and only after you use the control they belong to. They stay on your device, are never sent to us and are not used to recognise you:
theme: whether you chose the light or dark theme. Until you press the theme switch it is not set and the site follows your device.dir: whether the homepage list shows journeys from Gatwick or to Gatwick.
You can remove both at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser settings. The site works the same without them; it simply forgets your choice.
Door-to-door planner
When you use the door-to-door planner, the postcode or area you type is sent from your browser directly to postcodes.io, for suggestions, and to Transport for London's journey planner, for the route. It is not sent to us, and we never store it or put it in our web addresses. Your browser keeps your last few searches for up to ten minutes in this tab's session storage so that going back does not ask TfL again; closing the tab deletes them. Postcodes.io and TfL handle your request under their own privacy policies.
The planner also fetches the list of bank holidays from GOV.UK and keeps it in the same session storage for up to a day. That request carries nothing you typed.
Journey planner
The journey planner runs on our own server with no AI service involved. If you type a London postcode or area, our server asks Transport for London's journey planner for the tube leg between it and the London station, as the door-to-door planner does from your browser; the address goes to TfL and nowhere else, and we do not store it. The delay margins come from a file of past train performance we build from National Rail's Historical Service Performance data, with nothing about you in it. A finished plan is kept in the server's memory for ten minutes so a reload does not ask TfL again, and is then discarded.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 (Google Ireland Limited) to see which pages are visited. Its script loads from googletagmanager.com on every page and sets cookies named_ga and _ga_ followed by a code. It reports page views, approximate location, device and browser, and how you arrived, to Google, which may process that data outside the UK. We do not use it for advertising and we do not send it your name, email or anything you type into the site. You can block it with your browser's tracking settings or Google's opt-out add-on (opens in a new tab). The Travelpayouts analytics inside the Kiwitaxi box, described above, run separately and only after you press its button.
Hosting and technical logs
The site runs on a single server that we rent from a hosting company in Europe, behind the Caddy web server. As with any website, delivering a page means that server receives your IP address and basic details of the request, such as the page asked for and your browser type, because it needs them to send the page back. The web server keeps no log of individual page requests. Error messages from the server are kept for up to 30 days to fix problems. We do not use any of this to identify visitors or build profiles.
Our fonts and scripts are served from gatwick.express itself. Pages do not load anything from social networks, advertisers or font services. The only outside code is the Kiwitaxi box described above, and only after you press its button.
When you contact us
If you send a message through the contact form, we receive the name, email address and message you type. The form posts to this site's own server, which stores the message and passes it on to us; no form-handling company is involved. We use what you send to reply and, if you have reported a mistake, to correct the site. We do not add you to a mailing list, and we never sell or share your details. We delete messages once they have been dealt with and are no longer needed to follow up a correction.
Our lawful basis for handling what you send is our legitimate interest in answering you and keeping the site accurate.
Links to other sites
Route pages and guides link to operators, the airport and National Rail. Those sites have their own privacy and cookie policies, which apply once you leave this one. A link of ours to Kiwitaxi is marked as sponsored and opens in a new tab.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask to see the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it, delete it or stop using it. Send the request through the contact form and we will respond within the time the law allows. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK regulator, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
Changes to this notice
If what the site does with information changes, for example if we add another booking box, this page will be updated first and the date at the top will change. It last changed when Google Analytics was added.