The Stansted Express (“Stansted Express”, “STEX”) service is operated by Greater Anglia Trains Limited (“Greater Anglia”, “GA”, “we”, “us” or “our”). Greater Anglia is the Data Controller for any personal data processed through this service. Stansted Express is not a separate legal entity and does not hold its own ICO registration.
Greater Anglia takes your privacy seriously. We want to be open and honest about how we handle your personal information and make sure you understand what we do with it.
This Privacy Notice explains:
GREATER ANGLIA operates train services across the East Anglia franchise, providing commuter and inter-city services from its central London terminus at London Liverpool Street to Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and parts of Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and the throughout parts of the East of England.
Our full company name is Greater Anglia Trains Limited and we’re registered with the UK’s data protection regulator – the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
ICO registration number is ZA201606.
If you have any questions about how we use your data or want to exercise any of your data protection rights, you can contact our Data Protection Manager at [email protected]. You can also exercise your rights via our GA DSAR Portal.
“Personal data” (or “personal information”) means anything that can identify you. This includes things like:
If information can be linked to you, it’s classed as personal data.
When we process personal data, we mean anything we do with it - such as collecting, storing, using, or sharing it. For example, when you buy a ticket online, we collect your name and payment details, store them securely, and use them to issue your ticket and send you a confirmation email.
Greater Anglia is the "data controller". This means we are responsible for deciding how and why we use your personal data.
We follow the rules set out in:
These laws mean we have to use your data fairly, lawfully, and transparently.
If you have any questions about how we use your data or if you want to exercise your rights (which we explain later in this notice), you can contact us in the following ways:
Email us: [email protected]
Web Portal: GA DSAR Portal
We collect personal information from different sources, including directly from you, from devices you use, from public sources, and from other organisations.
We collect personal information when you:
When you use our website, app, or onboard/station Wi-Fi, we automatically collect information from your device. This may include:
See the next section for more details on how we collect and use website and Wi-Fi data.
We use CCTV cameras on our trains and at stations, as well as body-worn cameras worn by staff, to:
Body-worn cameras record audio and video and are used in situations such as fare disputes or anti-social behaviour.
We may receive personal information about you from:
We process information we hold about you to detect, investigate, and prevent fare evasion or other fraudulent activity. These measures help ensure fair travel for everyone and protect our services from misuse. Where required or permitted by law, we may share relevant data with law enforcement agencies, other train operators, or carefully chosen third parties.
This processing is carried out in line with our statutory and contractual obligations (including the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 and Railway Byelaws) and under Schedule 2, Part 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018, which permits the use of personal data for the prevention or detection of crime.
Because this processing is necessary for the performance of a public task in the public interest, you do not have the right to object under Article 21(6) of the UK GDPR. However, if a fraud investigation directly affects you, you can contact us for more information on how your data was used.
We collect and use different types of personal information depending on how you interact with us. This includes:
When you fill in a form, buy a ticket, or create an account, we collect:
This is information we collect about you as a customer using our services:
In some cases, we may need to process confidential or sensitive information about you. For example:
When you use our website, mobile app, or onboard Wi-Fi, we automatically collect:
We also track how you interact with our emails, SMS, and push notifications, including:
We use cookies and tracking technologies for marketing and advertising purposes. Where required by law, we seek your consent before setting these cookies.
For more details on how we use cookies and how to manage your settings, see our Cookie Policy.
Sometimes, we make reasonable assumptions based on the data we already hold. For example:
These insights are useful for us as a business and service provider because they allow us to:
We may analyse customer data to create groups based on travel habits (e.g., commuters, families) to improve our marketing and services. We may also use certain patterns or behaviours (such as unusual travel activity) as part of our wider efforts to detect and prevent fraud.
We do not make automated decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you, unless we’ve told you about it elsewhere in this notice (for example, in relation to Delay Repay claims, which you can appeal).
Sometimes, we receive data about you from third parties, including:
We use CCTV cameras on our trains and at stations, as well as body-worn cameras worn by staff, to:
We keep CCTV footage for 30 days or less from the time of recording, unless required for an ongoing investigation or by law.
Recordings from body worn cameras are kept for 30 days or less from the time of recording, unless required for an ongoing investigation or by law.
You have the right to request a copy of CCTV footage of yourself (this is called a Subject Access Request). To do this, contact our Data Protection team.
However, the right of access is not a blanket right, and we must balance your request against other legal considerations, including:
We will process police requests for CCTV footage when they make an enquiry about theft or other criminal incidents that have taken place on our trains or at our stations. Police requests are prioritised over other types of requests.
If your car has been damaged in one of our managed car parks and you need CCTV footage, please note:
Some requests may be deemed disproportionate, meaning that the effort required to fulfil them outweighs their necessity or benefit. Examples include:
Requesting CCTV footage of a suitcase – Under data protection law, CCTV only applies to identifiable, living individuals, so we cannot provide footage of objects such as suitcases. However, if the police request the footage as part of an investigation, we will cooperate and provide it to them where appropriate.
Requesting footage as proof for a delay repay claim We will not provide CCTV footage to show that you were on a train, as this is not required to assess Delay Repay claims and would be a disproportionate use of resources. There are other ways to confirm whether a train was late or on time, and we will provide this information through appropriate channels.
Requesting several days’ worth of car park footage – We do not have the capacity to manually review this amount of footage in real-time.
We may decline a request if:
We may share CCTV footage with law enforcement agencies (e.g., the police, British Transport Police) when required for criminal investigations, safety concerns, or legal matters. Police requests are prioritised over public requests due to their importance in maintaining security and enforcing the law.
Under UK data protection law, we must have a valid reason (known as a “lawful basis”) for collecting, storing, and using your personal data. The basis depends on what we’re using your data for. These are the lawful bases we rely on:
Important: You can’t withdraw consent if it wasn’t the basis we relied on – for instance, when we process your data to deliver a ticket, that’s done under a contract, not consent.
We use your personal information for different purposes depending on the service. In most cases, we rely on the lawful bases of contract, legal obligation, consent (where needed), or our legitimate interests. Where we’re delivering services under direction from the Department for Transport, some processing may also be considered a public task carried out in the public interest. If that applies, we’ll only rely on it where we believe it’s legally justified.
We process your data to:
Lawful Basis: Contract (where necessary to provide services) or Legitimate Interests (for general support and service improvements).
We may use your information to:
Lawful Basis: Contract (for service updates) or Legitimate Interests (for notice updates and operational messages).
Where permitted, we use your data to:
Lawful Basis: Consent (for marketing) or Legitimate Interests (for website personalisation and marketing analysis).
If you use our Wi-Fi, we may process your data to
Lawful Basis: Contract (if Wi-Fi is part of your ticketed service) or Legitimate Interests (for operational support).
We may process personal data to:
Lawful Basis: Vital Interests (for emergencies), Legal Obligation (where required by law), or Legitimate Interests (for security purposes).
Below, we explain these purposes in more detail, along with the Lawful Basis we rely on under data protection laws
We only use your personal information based on your consent in specific situations. Below is an overview of when we rely on consent and what it covers. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
| Purpose of Processing | When We Rely on Your Consent |
|---|---|
| Sending you marketing communications (including offers, service updates, and promotions) | We only send direct marketing if you’ve opted in. |
| Journey alerts and ticket sale notifications | We send these when you’ve asked to receive them – for example, alerts for a specific route. |
| Sharing data with partner services or platforms (e.g. social media tools, referral schemes) | We only ask for your consent if required by law or where the third party will use your data for their own purposes. |
We use your data when it is necessary to fulfil a contract with you, such as providing a service you have requested.
| Purpose of Processing | Why this applies |
|---|---|
| Responding to your enquiries and complaints | We need to respond to customer requests as part of our service commitment. |
| Fulfilling the service or providing the information you’ve requested | This is necessary to deliver the services you have requested. |
| Handling the administration of your payment, issuing tickets/products, or confirming orders | We need to process transactions and issue tickets or confirmations. |
| Providing post-sales support (e.g. complaints, refunds, ticketing or travel issues) | This ensures you receive support for any issues related to your purchase. |
| General record-keeping and passenger relationship management | We maintain records to manage our customer relationships. |
In some cases, we process your personal data because it is necessary for our business operations, provided it does not override your rights.
| Purpose of Processing | Why This Applies |
|---|---|
| Responding to enquiries, complaints, and post-sales support (e.g. refunds, ticketing issues) | It is in our interest to provide good customer service and ensure customer satisfaction. |
| Fulfilling the service or providing requested information | We must provide accurate and timely service to customers. |
| Handling the administration of payments, issuing tickets, or confirming orders | Ensuring smooth transactions is essential to our service. |
| Sending service communications (e.g. ticket confirmations, updates, journey alerts) | Keeping customers informed about their travel plans is part of our engagement with them. |
| Personalising your website experience (e.g. recommending relevant services) | Enhancing the customer experience makes our service more useful. |
| Improving our website, services, and products | Continuous improvements help us better meet customer needs. |
| Conducting market research and surveys, analysing marketing activities | Gathering feedback allows us to refine our services and better engage with customers. |
| Assisting with Wi-Fi technical support and ensuring website functionality | Ensuring reliable digital services benefits customers. |
| Using CCTV to prevent, deter, and investigate crime | CCTV helps maintain security and supports law enforcement. |
We use automated tools to decide the outcome of Delay Repay claims. These help us process claims fairly and quickly by assessing eligibility and calculating any compensation due.
If you disagree with an outcome, you can appeal. Some appeals are reviewed automatically again, and others are passed to our team for a manual check. If you're still not happy after this, you can ask Customer Relations to look into it further.
We don’t make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects unless there’s a route for a human to step in and review the outcome.
We sometimes use your information in an aggregated form, where all personally identifiable details are removed. Once data is fully anonymised, it is no longer considered personal data under data protection law.
However, the process of anonymising data itself does fall under UK GDPR, which means we must ensure that personal data is handled securely and lawfully before we remove any identifiable details.
Why do we do this?
For example, we might analyse anonymised travel patterns to understand which routes are most popular or identify potential target markets for new services.
How does this protect your data?
Lawful Basis: The process of anonymisation falls under UK GDPR, as we must handle your data lawfully before making it non-identifiable. However, once anonymised, the data is no longer subject to data protection laws because it can no longer be linked to you.
When we refer to "sensitive information", we mean special category data (such as health information) and criminal conviction or offence data, as defined under data protection law.
We understand that some types of personal data, such as bank account details or payment information, may feel sensitive. However, these are not classified as "sensitive information" under data protection law - they are still protected, but they do not require the same legal justifications as special category or criminal offence data.
There may be situations where the examples below do not involve sensitive information - for instance, general CCTV monitoring or processing standard personal data for customer service purposes. However, this table only applies when the processing involves special category or criminal offence data.
| Purpose of Processing | Explicit Consent | Vital Interests (where consent cannot be given) | Legal Claims | Substantial Public Interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Helping you in an emergency situation | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Providing Passenger Assist services | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Responding to law enforcement agency requests for CCTV (where the footage is used in relation to a crime or criminal investigation) | ✓ | |||
| Dealing with fraud, crime, or serious incidents on our trains or at railway stations, including fraud involving delay repay claims or suspicious ticket purchases | ✓ | ✓ |
We use your personal information to develop, analyse, and optimise our marketing activities, including sharing travel offers, ideas, and news with you.
We may contact you through:
For example, we may use your name, address, location, and past journeys to ensure our marketing is relevant, accurate, and effective. We also use tools like Google and Facebook to target you with personalised messages based on your online behaviour.
We already hold your email address from your account registration, ticket purchases, or other interactions with us. For marketing analysis, we sometimes share a hashed version of that email address with Google to measure how well our ads are performing. The data is hashed so it’s not shared in a directly identifiable form. Because we’re using data we already hold - rather than placing new tracking cookies - we rely on legitimate interests for this activity, in line with UK GDPR.
We may also use Facebook Conversion API to track the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. If you visit our website via an advert served by Facebook, Facebook may log your behaviour on our website in accordance with its own privacy policy. We do not receive your personal data from this activity.
We only send marketing messages where we have:
We also use your information to create a personalised experience on our website and to show you offers or rewards that are relevant to you.
You can opt out of marketing at any time by:
Important: Even if you opt out of marketing, you will still receive service communications, such as booking confirmations, disruption notices, and timetable changes.
If you are a corporate customer and wish to opt out of marketing, please contact our Data Protection team via email.
We share your personal information with third parties for various reasons, including business operations, service delivery, and legal requirements.
Some third parties carry out business functions on our behalf, such as website administration, IT support, and payment processing. These companies act as data processors under data protection law, meaning they only process your personal data based on our instructions.
We ensure these third parties have appropriate security standards in place before sharing any personal data. Examples include:
In some cases, we share your personal data with third parties who act as data controllers in their own right. This means they make their own decisions about how to process your data. We may share data in the following circumstances:
All personal information shared with third parties is transferred securely. When third parties act as data processors, they:
For independent data controllers, we only share what is necessary and ensure they comply with data protection laws.
Greater Anglia is currently operated under public ownership by a government-owned company called the Department for Transport Operator (DFTO). The DFTO acts as the commercial arm of the Department for Transport.
If the legal company running Greater Anglia changes in future (for example, if a different DFTO company is appointed), your personal data may be transferred to that new company. This helps ensure continuity of service – including your bookings, customer service history, and, where applicable, your marketing preferences.
If you've opted in to receive marketing communications, those preferences would carry over so you don't miss out on updates or offers you've asked for. You can still change or withdraw your preferences at any time.
If this kind of change happens, we’ll update this Privacy Notice to explain who the new data controller is. Your data protection rights won’t change, and you’ll be able to contact the new controller with any questions or concerns.
We aim to keep as much of your personal data as possible within the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA). In fact, this is something we take very seriously and actively work to achieve. However, in some cases, we may need to transfer your data outside these areas if there is no practical alternative.
Some countries already have data protection laws equivalent to those in the UK and EEA, but where this is not the case, we ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place. These safeguards may include:
If you would like more information about the safeguards in place, or details on where they are available, you can call, email, or write to our Data Protection team.
Your personal information is protected under data protection law, and you have specific rights. These don’t apply in all situations, but if you ask to use a right, we’ll always explain whether it applies and why.
We may refuse erasure if we need to keep the data for legal, contractual, or regulatory reasons, or to establish or defend legal claims.
If you later provide your data to us again (e.g. by signing up to marketing), we’ll treat you as a new customer.
If you’d like to know more about your rights or want to use any of them, please contact our Data Protection team at [email protected].
You have the right to ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you. This is called a Subject Access Request (SAR).
We provide this information free of charge, except in limited cases—for example, repeat or clearly unreasonable requests. We aim to respond within one month of confirming your identity.
If your request is very broad or complex and can’t be completed within a month, we will:
If you'd like a copy of your personal data, please email or write to our Data Protection team. Unless you ask for a different format, we’ll usually provide the data electronically—especially if your request was made by email or social media.
We may ask you to narrow down your request if:
If we ask for clarification, we’ll explain why and help you refine your request so you get what you need as quickly as possible.
If we hold personal data about you, we’ll:
You can request CCTV footage of yourself as part of a Subject Access Request (SAR), but there are limits on when we can provide it.
Please see the CCTV and body-worn camera section of this Privacy Notice for more detail. That section explains:
We have a legal duty to keep the personal information we collect accurate and up to date. You have the right to ask us to correct anything that's inaccurate, and to restrict how we use your data until it's been corrected.
The easiest way to keep your information accurate is to log into your account on our website and update your details. You can also contact our Data Protection team to make changes.
We help keep your data accurate by:
We have a legal obligation to keep your personal information accurate and up to date. You also have the right to ask us to correct any inaccuracies, and to restrict how we use your data until it’s been corrected.
The easiest way to keep your details accurate is to log into your account on our website and update them directly. You can also contact our Data Protection team to request updates.
We help maintain accuracy by:
We also use a combination of administrative, electronic, and physical safeguards to protect your data from:
We retain your personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Notice. This includes:
If you would like more details about our data retention policy, you can contact our Data Protection team.
| Type of Data | Retention Period |
|---|---|
| Marketing consent | Needs to be refreshed 36 months after last customer interaction |
| Customer complaints, compensation claims and investigations | 24 months from the date of the incident, unless subject to legal proceedings |
| Refund cases | 12 months |
| Customer call recordings | No longer than 12 months (unless part of a complaint – see above) |
| Wi-Fi registration & usage | 26 months after last recorded use |
| My Customer Account (web account, e-ticket/smart ticket account, Goldstar season ticket database) | 26 months after last recorded use |
| Default retention period for all surveillance camera systems | No longer than 30 days |
| CCTV or BWV footage designated potentially relevant for verification or assist with the verification of criminal investigation/civil claim (insurance and 3rd party claims) or complaint | 3.5 years |
| CCTV or BWV footage chain of custody documentation | 3.5 years |
| CCTV or BWV footage and actual documentation designated as actually relevant for verification or assist with the verification of civil claim (insurance and 3rd party claims) or complaint | 6 years |
| CCTV or BWV footage disclosed following a Subject Access Request | 6 years |
If you have a complaint about how we handle your personal information, please contact our Data Protection team, and we will do our best to resolve your concerns as quickly as possible.
We understand that data protection matters can be important and sometimes frustrating, but we ask that you treat our team with respect. We are here to help, and we will not tolerate abusive or aggressive behaviour.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to escalate your complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can find their contact details in the section above or visit https://ico.org.uk for more information.
Our website may contain links to external sites, such as the ICO’s website referenced in this Privacy Notice. However, this Privacy Notice only applies to Greater Anglia and does not cover any third-party websites or organisations we may link to.
We strongly encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external websites you visit to understand how they handle your personal information.
We review our Privacy Notice regularly to ensure it remains accurate and up to date.
This Privacy Notice was last updated on 12 October 2025.
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