Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive and are widely used to make websites work and to function more effectively. Without some of these cookies, the website simply would not work. Other cookies perform functions like recognising you each time you visit the site or helping our team to understand which parts of the site you find most interesting and useful.
A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any personally identifiable information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. A cookie will typically contain a record of the website which issued it, its own name, and a value which is often a randomly generated unique number. A cookie will have a ‘lifetime’, which tells your browser when to delete it.
Purpose and type of cookies
Cookies are used for different purposes. The most common ones are as follows:
- Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of a website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.
- Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
- Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
- Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.
There are also several different types of cookies. The most common types are as follows:
- Session cookies. Session cookies only last for the duration of your website visit. A web browser normally deletes session cookies when it quits.
- Persistent cookies. Persistent cookies will outlast user sessions. If a persistent cookie has its maximum age set to 1 year, then, within the year, the initial value set in that cookie would be sent back to the server every time the user visited the server. This could be used to record a piece of information such as how the user initially came to this website. For this reason, persistent cookies are also called tracking cookies.
- Secure cookies. Secure cookies are only used when a browser is visiting a server via HTTPS, ensuring that the cookie is always encrypted when transmitting from client to server.
- First-party cookies. First-party cookies are cookies set with the same domain (or its subdomain) in the browser’s address bar.
- Third-party cookies. Third-party cookies are cookies set with different domains from the one shown on the address bar (i.e. the web pages on that domain may feature content from a third-party domain – e.g. Google Maps or YouTube). Privacy setting options in most modern web browsers allow you to block third-party tracking cookies.
The cookies we use
We do not use cookies to store personal data about you, and will not attempt to identify you through the use of cookies.
The table below provides an overview of the cookies used on our website, including details of who sets each cookie, its purpose, when it expires, and, if relevant, how you can find out further information.
| Cookie Name | 1st or 3rd party | What is the purpose of the cookie? | Lifetime | Further information |
| _ga | 3rd party | Google Analytics – Used to distinguish users. | 2 years | https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookies-user-id |
| _gid | 3rd party | Google Analytics – Used to distinguish users. | 24 hours | https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage |
| _gat | 3rd party | Google Analytics – Used to limit the number of requests per user to help the website perform better. | 1 minute | https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage |
| _uetsid | 3rd party | Bing – Microsoft Bing Ads Universal Event Tracking (UET) tracking cookie. | 1 year | https://help.bingads.microsoft.com/#apex/3/en/53056/1/#exp151 |
Please note that third parties (including, for example, social media websites, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. This includes where our website includes javascript from social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies although we recommend that you visit their website and review their privacy and cookies policy to ensure that you understand what cookies they use and why.
The Law
The principal law which governs how websites use cookies and similar technologies when storing information on a user’s equipment, such as their computer or mobile device, is the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations. The regulations were amended on 26 May 2011.
Regulation 6 covers the use of electronic communications networks to store information (e.g. cookies) or to gain access to information stored in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user. The change in the law was prompted by concerns about online tracking of individuals and is intended to protect the privacy of users by requiring their knowledge and agreement to the use of cookies, even where the information collected is not directly personally identifiable.
Your Choice
You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.
Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer and you can also view and/or delete cookies already on your computer although this will depend on the particular web browser that you use. Information can also be found on the main browser websites:
- https://www.apple.com/safari/ (Apple Safari)
- https://www.google.com/chrome (Google Chrome)
- https://www.microsoft.com (Internet Explorer)
- https://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox (Mozilla Firefox)
- https://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp (Netscape)
- https://www.opera.com (Opera)