Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you browse websites.
Cookies are not actual programs or software. When you visit a website it stores a snippet of text from your visit; the next time you visit, this text is retrieved by the website and they recognise you. This can be used differently depending on the actual website visited. Cookies allow websites to store such things as user preferences. You can think of cookies as providing a “memory” for the website, enabling it to recognise a user and respond appropriately. Cookies on our website do NOT store any personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, email addresses or phone numbers.
For more details see, What are Cookies?
Our cookies help us:
- Make our website work as you’d expect
- Remember your settings during visits
- Allow you to share pages (names/blog articles) with social networks like Facebook or Twitter
- Continuously improve our website for you
We do not use cookies to:
- Collect any personally identifiable information – we will always ask for your express permission if we ever do collect this information.
- Collect any sensitive information, without your express permission
A cookie will typically hold:
- The name of the website that it has come from
- How long the cookie will stay on your computer or phone
- A value – usually a randomly generated unique number
- Session cookies – these only last until you close your browser. They are not stored on your hard drive. They are usually used to track the pages that you visit so that information can be customised for you for that visit.
- Persistent cookies – these are stored on your hard drive until you delete them or they reach their expiry date. These may, for example, be used to remember your preferences when you use the site.
If the settings on the software you are using to view this website (i.e. browser e.g. Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox etc) are set up to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you accept our use of cookies. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can disable cookies through ‘Internet Options’ on your browser menu at any time, however please be aware that doing so will probably mean that our site may not work as well as you would expect.
Our use of cookies falls into a few categories such as:
- Website function cookies
- Social media cookies
- Third party and advertising cookies
- Analytics cookies
We use cookies to make our website function including:
- Holding information once you’ve logged in to save you having to re-login each time you visit a different page during your session
- Once you log off or close the browser the session cookie will be removed
Our site, like most websites, includes functionality provided by third parties. A common example is an embedded YouTube or Vimeo video.
Disabling these cookies is likely to break the functions offered by these third parties
To facilitate easy sharing or liking of content on social network platforms such Facebook and Twitter, we have included sharing buttons on our site.
The privacy implications on this will vary from social network to social network and will be dependent on the privacy settings you have chosen on these networks.
Analytics programs use cookies to compile website statistics for us to use to improve our site. Unless you explicitly give us your information by filling in a form or calling us, all data that analytics programs collect is stored anonomously where we only see totals and not specific individual data.
Examples include:
- How visitors reached our website (e.g. from a search engine, an advert, from social media site etc)
- The activity of users on the site such as the number of pages viewed, time spend on individual pages, the pages visitors leave our site on
- How often visitors return to our site
- Visitor technology used (e.g. browser, operating system, device etc)
These statistics help us make our site as user-friendly as possible, to ensure a good experience for all visitors. We use:
- Google Analytics which is a program that helps us measure site usage details including the examples above.
We regularly test new designs or site features on our site. We do this by showing slightly different versions of our website to different people and anonymously monitoring how visitors respond to these different versions. Ultimately this helps us to offer you a better website.
We use: Google web master tools
Some of our business partners or third parties use cookies or other tracking technologies on our site, including:
- Third party vendors, including Google, show ads on sites on the internet.
- Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to our website.
We have no access to or control over these cookies. Users may opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page.
We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business.
You may opt out of the DoubleClick cookie by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page or you may opt out of Google Analytics by visiting the Google Analytics opt-out page.
You can switch cookies off by adjusting your internet browser settings to stop it accepting cookies. There are many different browsers and versions. Some of the most common browsers and versions and listed below. Click the name of your preferred browser below to learn how to disable and manage cookies. If you version of browser is not listed, please visit your preferred search engine.
Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Safari
Google Chrome
Please be aware though that turning off cookies will impair the performance of many websites and not just ours.
Cookie Settings
