Lost property
What to do if you leave something in one of our cars, how we look after it, and how you get it back.
Version 2026-09-2, in effect from 16 September 2026.
1If you have just left something behind
Call us on the telephone number at the foot of every page as soon as you can. The sooner we know, the more likely we can reach the chauffeur before their next journey.
Have your booking reference ready if you can. It is in your confirmation email or text message.
2How to report lost property
Report it by telephone, or by email to the address on our contact page. Tell us your booking reference, or the date, time, pickup and destination; what the item is, with its colour, brand and anything distinctive; where in the car you think you left it; and how we can contact you.
Please do not send us passwords, PINs or card numbers to prove something is yours. We will never ask for them.
3What we do
When you report something lost, we log your report, ask the chauffeur who carried out your booking to check the car, and tell you what we found within 24 hours.
When a chauffeur or anyone else finds something in one of our cars, we log it, keep it safe, and use the booking details to try to contact the passenger and arrange its return. We record every attempt to reach you, and what happened to the item.
Conditions 34 and 35 of the operator licence Hertsmere Borough Council grants us require us to have this policy, to remind chauffeurs to check the car after every booking, and to have anything they cannot return themselves handed in to us. An authorised officer of the council, a police officer, a customer or a chauffeur may ask us for the policy, and we give it to them.
4Getting your item back
You can collect it free of charge. We tell you where and when as we arrange it. Please bring photo identification and your booking reference. Someone else can collect it for you if you tell us their name in advance and they bring photo identification.
We ask for identification because condition 37 requires us to record who we returned an item to, their address, and what identification we saw, and to keep that record.
We can post it or send it by courier. You pay the postage or courier cost, which we tell you before we send it, through a secure payment link. We never take card details by telephone.
A chauffeur can bring it to you, priced as a journey at our normal fixed price, which we show you before you agree.
If the item was left behind because of our mistake, we return it free.
5How long we keep items
We keep found items for 3 months from the date they were found, as condition 36 of our operator licence requires. Before this version of this page, we said 30 days. That was the London rule and it was never the rule that applies to us; 3 months is longer and it is the one we are held to.
If we still cannot reach you at the end of those 3 months, condition 38 requires us to write to the council's licensing team, which then either approves the item for destruction or asks us to deliver it to the council offices. We do not simply dispose of it ourselves.
Some items do not stay with us at all. Condition 39 requires money, a telephone, or an identity document such as a passport or driving licence to be taken immediately to the nearest police station, or to the council offices if the police cannot accept it. So if you have left a phone or a passport in one of our cars, ask us for the police station and the reference rather than expecting us to be holding it.
Condition 40 requires anything that is, or may be, unlawful or connected to a crime to be taken to the nearest police station, where we obtain a reference number and record it.
A bank card is not on the list in condition 39. We return one to the bank that issued it, or hand it to the police, and record which we did.
Food, drink and other perishable items are thrown away at the end of the day they are found. Condition 36 allows us to set a reasonable period for anything perishable, and for food and drink that period is the day.
6What we cannot do
We cannot open or look through phones, laptops or bags to find out who owns them, though we may read an outside label or luggage tag.
We are not responsible for items you leave in a car, but once an item is found we take reasonable care of it and do everything reasonable to return it. This does not affect your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
7Records we keep
Condition 36 requires us to record every item found at our operating centre or handed to us by a chauffeur. We record the date it was found, where and in which car, a description, every attempt we made to return it and whether it worked, and what became of it.
Condition 37 requires us to record the return of an item: who took it, their address, and the identification we saw. Both records are kept for at least 3 months, and we keep them for 24 months after the matter is closed and then remove your name and contact details.
An authorised officer of the council or a police officer can ask to see this policy and these records, and we produce them.
Back to the clauses of this document
8Every version of this document
- Version 2026-09-2 (the version in force)In effect from 16 September 2026
- Version 2026-09-1In effect from 15 September 2026
A published version is never edited. A correction is a new version with a new effective date, and your booking keeps the version you agreed to.