What are cookies?
For most websites to work properly, they need to collect certain basic information on its users. To do this, a website will create and store files known as cookies – which are small text and/or numerical files – on a users’ device and/or browsers.
Cookies do a lot of different jobs which make your experience of the Internet much smoother and more interactive. For instance, they are used to remember your preferences on sites you visit often, to remember your user ID and to help you navigate between pages more efficiently. They also help ensure that the advertisements that you see online are more relevant to you and your interests.
Much, though not all, of the data that they collect is anonymous, though some of it is designed to detect browsing patterns and approximate geographical location to improve user experience.
What types of cookies do we use?
Broadly speaking, there are four types of cookie: strictly necessary cookies, performance cookies, functionality cookies and targeting or advertising cookies.
- Functional cookies enable users to navigate around our website, use its features and customise how a website looks for them: they can remember login details, language preferences and regions, and can be used to provide services that are more personal
- Statistical cookies collect anonymous data on how visitors use our website; they can’t track visitors, and are only used to improve performance and how the website works.
- Marketing cookies track your browsing activities on the website to help use deliver advertisements, which are relevant, or to limit the number of times you see an advert. We can use these cookies to chart the effectiveness of an ad campaign by tracking ‘clicks’. Normally administered by a third party, these cookies can track your activities across a number of websites and this information may be shared amongst other advertisers.
- Third Party Cookies are utilised on our websites mainly for the purposes of understanding how the website performs, how you interact with our website, keeping our services secure, and all in all providing you with a better and improved user experience and help speed up your future interactions with our website.
Additionally, these cookies break down into two further sub-types;
- Persistent cookies remain on a user’s device for a set period of time specified in the cookie. They are activated each time that the user visits the website that created that particular cookie.
- Session cookies are temporary. They allow website operators to link the actions of a user during a browser session. A browser session starts when a user opens the browser window and finishes when they close the browser window. Once you close the browser, all session cookies are deleted.
When is your consent required for cookies?
The rules around use of cookies are defined within the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) which requires that:
We tell you what cookies we use;
What these cookies are doing and why; and
Ask for your consent to store any cookies on your device, which are not essential.
Any cookies that are not defined as ‘strictly necessary’ to provide the services across our website require your consent. Cookies deemed as helpful or convenient but not essential require clear and positive consent from you.
When you visit our website for the first time, we ask for your consent to store non-essential cookies on your device. You can update your cookie preferences at any time by clicking here. You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:
Google Analytics
Usage
We use Google Analytics for website statistics. Read more
Sharing data
For more information, please read the Google Analytics Privacy Statement.