Helli Cars and Pink Ladies, Skipton: How a Yorkshire mother’s distressing experience with a taxi sparked idea for popular new service for women and girls
Business owner, Amberine Nawaz, from Bradford, moved from Surrey back to Yorkshire in 2016 and has been involved in the taxi industry for 20 years.
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Hide AdInitially she was living in a farmhouse and due to the rural location, she found herself struggling to get taxis for her daughter.
Following a distressing experience when her daughter lost signal in a taxi on her way home from school, Ms Nawaz was inspired to set up her own taxi firm exclusively for women and girls to feel safe.
In 2023, Helli Cars and Pink Ladies was established and helped pick up and drop off vulnerable passengers.
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Hide Ad“I struggled to get taxis for my daughter, even in Skipton, in general there’s not that many taxi firms,” Ms Nawaz said.
“I remember when my daughter was in a taxi, I was on the phone to the taxi driver and I was on the phone to my daughter as well at various points.
“When she got picked up from school, she lost signal because it’s [quite a] rural [area] and I was so worried.
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Hide Ad“I don’t really know this taxi driver and the whole concept being with a male taxi driver, when my daughter was eight, I was quite panicky.
“I’ve driven on those roads and you don’t normally see anybody for another 10 minutes, so that’s what inspired me.”
Helli Cars is catered for the general public and includes a wheelchair accessible vehicle for people with disabilities.
There is also a chaperone service provided for the elderly.
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Hide Ad“We’ve got female drivers, however, we do take men as well,” Ms Nawaz said.
“When I set the business up, obviously I wanted to do the female side and then I looked at what else was needed in the Skipton area and even though on the council website it does say there are wheelchair accessible vehicles but there isn’t.
“I considered when somebody goes out with the family, there will also be two or three members of that family going out with them. I purchased a vehicle where you could have other people in the car with them.
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Hide Ad“We also provide a chaperone service; where we live in Skipton, quite a lot of the elderly don’t necessarily have family around them so they may need someone to go in with them to a hospital appointment or wheel them in the wheelchair, so we provide that service.
“When we drop the customers off, especially females, we wait for them to get inside the house before we move from there.”
Ms Nawaz has heard from women and girls about their negative experiences travelling by taxis and how unsafe they felt.
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Hide Ad“I’ve heard stories when I’ve picked customers up; a lady was telling about her sister who got attacked,” she said.
“Another woman who I picked up was saying how a taxi driver’s hand slipped from the gear stick and he ended up putting his hand on her leg.
“One of the girls I picked up a couple of weeks ago, she was saying how she got dropped off by a taxi, she couldn’t get inside, she sat outside waiting for hours.
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Hide Ad“It’s ridiculous the kind of stories you hear. I’ve been fortunate enough not to have experienced anything like that but I do realise there’s not such a service around.”
The taxi service will also combat isolation among vulnerable older passengers who may not have family around to give them lifts to appointments.
Pink Ladies driver Michelle Taylor said: “I do think the service is definitely needed within this area, there are so many people who are isolated and they not only have physical disabilities but mental disabilities too. A lot of them struggle with men, they feel more comfortable with a female [driver].
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Hide Ad“We’ve made a good rapport with people we’ve got as clients and they report back that if they didn’t have this service, they’d be isolated, they wouldn’t be going out, they wouldn’t be going shopping, they’d be relying on carers or neighbours. In that sense it took a lot of isolation away from the community.
Ms Nawaz is now looking to expand the business.
“I’m socially trained and so are a few of the other drivers which ensures that we provide that good service, that personal touch,” she said.
“On the female side, the usual taxi companies will just drop them off to get to another job, they don’t care, that’s what sets us apart, we want to know that the person who has got home is safe.
“We’re looking at expanding, we’re looking at offices in Bradford, hopefully by December and then we’re hopefully looking at Sheffield around 12 months from now.”
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