To help keep this site running smoothly, small data files are placed on your computer. These are known as cookies.
They improve things by:
- remembering settings, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
- remembering information you’ve given (eg your postcode) so you don’t need to keep entering it
- measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs
Our cookies aren’t used to identify you personally. They’re just here to make the site work better for you. Indeed, you can manage and/or delete these small files as you wish.
To learn more about cookies and how to manage them, visit AboutCookies.org.
Implied consent: we decided to use the implied consent approach to meeting EU and UK regulations on cookie use. While this approach is not ideal, it was the best solution we could find given practical problems for this site with other approaches. We will, though, continue to review available options.
First party cookies: these are our own cookies, controlled by us and used to provide information about usage of our site. Website analytic providers such as Google Analytics set cookies to help accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage.
Third party cookies: these are cookies found in other companies’ internet tools which may be used to enhance a website, for example YouTube and Google Maps have their own cookies, which are controlled by them. This website does not control the dissemination of these cookies. You should check the third party websites for more information about these. To opt-out of third-parties collecting any data regarding your interaction on our website, please refer to their websites for further information.
Below is a list of cookies used on this site.
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting its users’ needs and to understand how we could do it better. Google Analytics stores information about what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal information (eg, your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are.
__utma: this Cookie is used to identify unique visitors to our sites. The results are sent to our Google Analytics account so that we may see how many unique visitors come to this site based over a period of time. It has a default lifespan of two years.
__utmb: this cookie is used by Google Analytics to determine the visitor session times on our sites. Each time you visit a new page on the site the cookie is set to expire within 30 minutes, if it does not find an existing cookie, a new one is created.
__utmc: this cookie is used by Google Analytics in conjunction with __utmb to determine visitor sessions. Unlike __utmb this cookie does not have an expiry date, it determines whether a new session should be created based on whether you have previously closed your browser, re-opened it and come back to the site.
__utmz: this cookie is used by Google Analytics to determine the type of referral used by each visitor to arrive at our site. The cookie determines if the user has come directly to the site or via a search engine, email or email campaign. We use this data to understand how our users arrive at the website.
__utmv: this cookie is used to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. It has a default lifespan of two years.
__utmt: this cookie is used to throttle the request rate for the service – limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites. It expires after 10 minutes.
Cookie Notice
cookie_notice_accepted: this cookie is used in order to hide the Cookie Message (for one month) once the user clicks OK.