Our use of cookies

We put cookies (which are small text files) on your device in order to track your use of our website and to improve your browsing experience. This tracking is not linked to your name and is not used to identify you as a person. We use the following cookies:

 

Session use: We use cookies to track each session by devices that access our website.

Cookies:

  • _pageRef: Expires after one month
  • _sessionRef: Expires when you close your browser

We also use a cookie for load balancing to make sure that visitor page requests are sent to the same server in any given browsing session.

Cookie:

  • ARRAffinity: Expires when you close your browser

 

Analytics: We use various analytical cookies to evaluate and track customer use of our website. Whilst we place these cookies on your device, we obtain them from Google. These cookies are not removed when you leave the website and are kept for a varying amount of time, unless deleted by the user.

Google Analytics Cookies:

  • _ga: This is used to distinguish users and expires after two years
  • _gid: This is used to distinguish users and expires after 24 hours
  • _gat: This is used to restrict the refresh rate and expires after one minute

 

In addition to these cookies, Google also uses some cookies that are used to store the preferences and information of users each time they visit web pages containing google services.

Cookies:

  • 1P_JAR: Expires after 30 days
  • NID: Expires after six months
  • CONSENT: Expires after 20 years

 

Tracking: We also place cookies on your device which enable the company DoubleClick (owned by Google) to track you across our website and any other website that uses these cookies. This tracking enables DoubleClick to build up a picture of your interests and browsing habits in order to display adverts that they believe may be of interest to you.

Cookies:

  • DSID: Expires after one hour
  • IDE: Expires after three weeks

 

Google's privacy policy on the details it collects from these cookies can be found at: https://policies.google.com/privacy.

 

Your choices

Many cookies are used to provide functionality for the sites that you visit, but certain cookies can also be used to track your activities and interests across the internet.  Although this tracking is not normally for anything more intrusive than behavioural advertising, this could cause concern over the level or amount of data being collected.

There are a number of methods for controlling cookies. The Information Commissioner's website provides a good summary of your options for blocking or deleting them (https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/).

Note that some websites will lose functionality or become difficult to use if all cookies are permanently blocked. But, by using the available control options, you can normally obtain the right personal balance between website convenience and your sensitivity to this issue.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.