What are cookies?

When you visit our website, the site asks your browser to store a small piece of data (text file) called a cookie on your computer, tablet or mobile phone. 

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) covers the rules on cookies. PECR also covers the use of similar technologies for storing or accessing information, such as ‘Flash cookies’ and device fingerprinting.

The ICO is responsible for enforcing these rules.

Organisations have to provide clear and comprehensive information about the way they use cookies and ensure that for any cookie not strictly necessary for their website, they give you an appropriate means of consenting to that cookie being set on your device.

Cookies store or retrieve information on your browser, which might be about you, your preferences or your device but does not usually directly identify you. 

Cookies do lots of useful jobs. They help make websites work smoothly and provide information about how people browse.

We also use third-party cookies, which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting, for our advertising and marketing efforts. 

More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Types of cookies 

Essential.

 Some cookies are essential for our website to function and to keep it safe and secure. These cannot be switched off in our systems. They let you do things like login, move from page to page, and use our interactive tools. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work.

Functional, Performance, Analytical and Statistics

 
These cookies provide enhanced functionality and personalisation and allow us to run analytics and testing tools. They measure and improve how our website performs and give us feedback so that we can provide the best experience possible. For example, some analytics cookies allow us to count the number of website visitors and assess the most popular content. Other functional and performance cookies allow us to remember your preferences, and test new online tools for users.

For example, we use Google Analytics to collect information about how customers use our websites. This includes how long customers spend on our websites, how often they return and what demographic categories they fall into. For further information about how Google uses data, please visit www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.

Advertising & Marketing

We never show adverts from third parties on our website. However, we do advertise our products and services, and you may see our adverts around the Internet too. Some cookies are set by our advertising partners, used to build a profile of your interests and to show you relevant adverts on other sites. Details of these cookies and our advertising partners can be found in our cookie preference centre. We use cookies to measure how well our adverts do, to tell us where you saw a particular advert, and to ensure you don’t see the same advert too many times.

Social Media Cookies

We use buttons that let you share our pages on social networking websites. These buttons may place a third-party cookie on your device, which could gather usage information.

·      Facebook

·      Twitter

·      YouTube

To opt out of being tracked by the Facebook Social Media Button and Twitter Social Media Button on all the websites you visit, go to the General Account Settings of your Facebook and Twitter accounts, then click the opt-out link.

How do I change my cookie settings?

You can find more information about cookies and how to manage them at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/. You may disable cookies by changing the settings on your browser. However, if you do so, this will affect your enjoyment of our site and we will no longer be able to offer to you a personalised service

Some cookies are essential for making our website work well and cannot be turned off. All other cookies are turned off by default when you first visit our website, and you can choose to turn these on or turn them back off if you previously accepted these and have changed your mind. You can do this via our cookie banner or by clicking on "manage cookie preferences" at the top of this page to visit our cookie preference centre. You can also manage what cookies are stored on your computer directly by setting your browser to accept or reject certain cookies. However, blocking some types of cookies may mean some of the services or features on our sites won’t work properly.

Third-party cookies are set by someone else whose services we have added to our site, such as Google for measuring visits to our website. These are detailed in our cookie preference centre and all non-essential cookies (whether first or third-party) can be turned off.

If you share a link to a page on one of our sites, the platform you share it on (for example, Facebook) may set a cookie on your browser. We have no control over third-party cookies set on other sites– you can turn them off, but not through us.

Do not track (DNT) is a feature offered by some browsers which, if enabled, sends a signal to websites requesting that your browsing isn’t tracked. Currently, there is no industry-wide standard that has been agreed upon or universally adopted to determine how such signals are handled and for that reason, we do not respond to DNT requests. We will review how this feature, and other technologies similar, evolve and then take steps to incorporate as and when appropriate.

Remember that editing your cookie preferences will not remove any existing cookies from your browser. It’ll only affect the way cookies are used in future. If you want to remove any existing cookies, you can do this via your browser settings.

Browser controls

You can use your web browser to:

·      delete all cookies;

·      block all cookies;

·      allow all cookies;

·      block ‘third-party’ cookies (i.e., cookies set by online services other than the one you are visiting);

·      clear all cookies when you close the browser;

·      open a ‘private browsing’ / ‘incognito’ session, which allows you to browse the web without recording your browsing history or storing local data such as cookies (you should however be aware of the limitations of this feature in a privacy context); and

·      install add-ons and plugins that extend browser functionality.

Where to find information about controlling cookies
·      Microsoft Edge cookies information

·      Internet Explorer cookies information

·      Chrome cookies information

·      Firefox cookies information

·      Safari cookies information – mobile devices and desktops

·      Opera cookies information

Useful information
·      Several websites provide detailed information on cookies, including AboutCookies.org and AllAboutCookies.org.

·      The European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance website Your Online Choices allows you to install opt-out cookies across different advertising networks.

·      Google has developed a browser add-on to allow users to opt-out of Google Analytics across all websites which use it. This is also available in the Chrome web store.

·      Some browsers include a feature known as ‘Do Not Track’ or DNT. This allows you to indicate a preference that websites should not track you. However, whilst DNT is available in many browsers, websites are not required to recognise its request, so it may not always work. You can get help on how to use DNT in Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

·      Internet Explorer has a feature called Tracking Protection Lists which allows you to import a list of websites you want to block.

·      For more information on how private browsing works as well as its limitations, visit the support pages for your browser: Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari (mobile and desktop) and Opera.

Use of cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. The table below explains the cookies we use and why.

Category: Necessary (18)

Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.