Cookies

About cookies
Most websites use cookies to improve user experience. They are used to remember you for the duration of your visit or for repeat visits later.

Cookies are used for many different purposes, such as remembering your preferences and improving your interaction with the website. Perhaps the most important job is to remember when you have logged in, preventing you having to log in for every page you visit. Some websites will also use cookies for targeting advertising or marketing messages based on information such as your location or browsing habits.

What is a cookie?
A cookie is a simple text file sent from the website server that your browser stores on your computer or mobile device. Only the original server can retrieve or read the contents of the cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. It will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the website name.

Types of cookie

Session cookies
Session cookies are stored only temporarily during a browsing session and are deleted from the user’s device when the browser is closed.

Persistent cookies
Persistent cookies are saved on your computer for a longer, fixed period and are not deleted when the browser is closed. They are used to remember you when you visit the website again.

Third-party cookies
Third party cookies are set by a different organisation to the owner of the website you are visiting. They might include cookies set for website visitor analytics or embedded content, such as YouTube. Third-party cookies are also set by advertising networks to deliver targeted advertising on their website; these may also have the capability to track your browsing across different sites.

How we use cookies
Cookies enable us to identify you when you visit the website. We use cookies that are strictly necessary for using the site or providing basic features. We use cookies to improve the functionality of the website, such as storing your preferences. We also use cookies to help us to improve the performance of our website to provide you with a better user experience.

We do not store personally identifiable information in our cookies.

We don’t sell the information collected by cookies, nor do we disclose the information to third parties, except where required by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies).

Cookies we use:

Google Analytics
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These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.
Click here for an overview of privacy at Google.

What to do if you don’t want cookies
Some people don’t like the idea of websites storing information on their computer or mobile device. It is possible to block cookies and delete cookies that have already been set, but you might lose some functionality of the website.

We are planning to offer finer control in the future over what cookies are stored.

For now, if you don’t want to receive cookies, you can modify your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can do this through your browser settings or visit www.aboutcookies.org to find comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of desktop browsers.

What happens if I refuse cookies?

Implications for you
The basic website will still work, but you will not be able to use any functionality that requires logging in. Also, we won’t be able to customise the content for you.

Implications for us
If you refuse cookies we won’t be able to include your browsing in the statistics we collect about how visitors use our website. We use analytics to make improvements to our website and we want to understand how all our visitors are using the site.

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