What is a cookie?
Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. These are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow websites to recognise a user’s device.
You can find more information about cookies at:
All About Cookies and Your Online Choices
Cookies do lots of different jobs like letting users navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improve the user experience. They can also help to ensure that adverts you see online are more relevant to you and your interests.
The cookies used on this website have been categorised based on the categories found in the ICC UK Cookie guide. By using our website you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device as set out below.
This website uses the following cookie categories:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly necessary cookies will generally be used to store a unique identifier to manage and identify the user as unique to other users currently viewing the website, in order to provide a consistent and accurate service to that user.
Examples include:
- Remembering previous actions (e.g. entered text) when navigating back to a page in the same session
- Managing and passing security tokens to different services within a website to identify the visitor’s status (e.g. logged in or not)
- To maintain tokens for the implementation of secure areas of the website
- To route customers to specific versions/applications of a service, such as might be used during a technical migration
These cookies will not be used:
- To gather information that could be used for marketing to the user.
- To remember customer preferences or user ID’s outside a single session (unless the user has requested this function).
Performance cookies
These cookies can be first or third party, session or persistent cookies. These cookies are limited to performance and website improvement.
Examples include:
- Web analytics—where the data collected is limited to the website operator’s use only, for managing the performance and design of the site. These cookies can be third-party cookies, but the information must be for the exclusive use of the publisher of the website visited.
- Ad response rates—where the data is used exclusively for calculating response rates (click-through rates) to improve the effectiveness of advertising purchased on a site external to the destination website.
- Error management—Measuring errors presented on a website, typically this will be to support service improvement or complaint management and will generally be closely linked with web analytics.
- Testing designs—Testing variations of design, typically using A/B or multivariate testing, to ensure a consistent look and feel is maintained for the user of the site in the current and subsequent sessions.
These cookies are not used to re-target adverts.
Functionality cookies
These cookies can be first party, third party, session or persistent cookies. These cookies will typically be the result of a user action, but might also be implemented in the delivery of a service not explicitly requested but offered to the user. They can also be used to prevent the user being offered a service again that had previously been offered to that user and rejected.
Examples include:
- Remembering settings a user has applied to a website such as layout, font size, preferences, colours etc.
- Remembering a choice such as not to be asked again to fill in a questionnaire.
- Detecting if a service has already been offered, such as offering a tutorial on future visits to the website.
- Providing information to allow an optional service to function, such as offering a live chat session.
- Fulfilling a request by the user such as submitting a comment.
These cookies are not used to re-target adverts.
Cookies Used:
| Cookie | Purpose | Expires | Set By |
|---|---|---|---|
| __utma | This cookie is typically written to the browser upon the first visit to our site from that web browser. If the cookie has been deleted by the browser operator, and the browser subsequently visits our site, a new __utma cookie is written with a different unique ID. This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to our site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure. | 2 years from set/update | Google for Google Analytics |
| __utmz | This cookie stores the type of referral used by you to reach our site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within our own site. The cookie is updated with each page view to our site. | 6 months from set/update | Google for Google Analytics |
| __utmb | This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session between you and our site. When you view a page on our site, the Google Analytics code attempts to update this cookie. If it does not find the cookie, a new one is written and a new session is established. Each time you visit a different page on our site, this cookie is updated to expire in 30 minutes, thus continuing a single session for as long as your activity continues within 30-minute intervals. This cookie expires when a you pause on a page on our site for longer than 30 minutes. | 30 minutes from set/update | Google for Google Analytics |
| __utmc | Historically, this cookie operated in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user. For backwards compatibility purposes, this cookie will continue to be written and will expire when the user exits the browser. | On Browser Exit | Google for Google Analytics |
How to remove cookies
Alternatively, you may wish to visit All About Cookies which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer as well as more general information about cookies. For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.
Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of our website.
Further Information
Information Commissioner’s Office guidance
For more background on the new law, the ICO has published two separate rounds of guidance on the new rules for using cookies which can be found at: ICO Cookie Rules
Information about cookies
Useful information about the technical aspects of cookies can be found at: All About Cookies