Cookies policy
What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files which are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website or application. Your web browser (such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) then sends these cookies back to the website or application on each subsequent visit so that they can recognise you and remember things like personalised details or user preferences.
Cookies are very useful and do lots of different jobs which help to make your experience on websites as smooth as possible. For example, they let you move between web pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improving your experience.
They are referred to as session or persistent cookies, depending on how long they are used:
- Session cookies only last for your online session and disappear from your computer or device when you close your browser.
- Persistent cookies stay on your computer or device after the browser has been closed and last for the period of time specified in the cookie. These persistent cookies are activated each time you visit the site where the cookie was generated.
Which cookies do we use and why?
When you use one of our services on a web browser or a device, the following four categories of cookies may be set:
‘Strictly necessary’ cookies
These cookies are essential in helping you to move around our website and to use our features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies some services may not function. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you’ve been on the internet.
Those used by us include:
- PHPSESSID
- This cookie is essential for our site to allow you to use it in a way that makes your browsing experience more convenient, for example, by allowing you to store items in an electronic shopping basket between visits. If you register with us or complete our online forms, we will use cookies to remember your details during your current visit, and any future visits provided the cookie was not deleted in the interim.
- JSESSIONID
- This cookie is essential for our site to allow us to monitor the performance of the underlying code and stores a session identifier used by our performance solution New Relic, more information is available from https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/browser/new-relic-browser/page-load-timing-resources/new-relic-cookies-used-browser.
Functional cookies
These cookies allow websites and applications to remember choices you make and provide enhanced, more personal features. Whilst these cookies don’t collect things like your name or email address, they do collect a unique user identifier code. This enables us to identify your device so that we can improve your experience and make sure your settings are remembered correctly, for example functional cookies are used to remember your session ID or if you’ve saved favourite content.
Analytics cookies
In order to keep our website relevant, easy to use and up-to-date, we use analytics cookies to help us understand how people use them. Our website uses Google Analytics a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics uses cookies to help us analyse how visitors use the site in the aggregate. It does not collect personally identifiable information, and does not track your movements between different websites. Find out more about Google's policies here.
The cookies used by Google Analytics are:
Cookie |
Name |
Purpose |
Universal Analytics (Google) Google Analytics 4 (GA4) |
_ga _gat_UA _gid |
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the website, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited. |
You may opt out of Google Analytics on all websites by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, or just for this website.
Find out more about the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on
The cookies used by Google and Facebook are:
Targeting and advertising cookies |
Purpose |
_gsas (Google AdSense for Search) |
Provided by Google Ads - AdSense for Search and Google Ad Manager). These are advertising cookies, which include the personalisation of any ads and allow us to analyse marketing efforts, serving the most relevant advertising to the correct audience. |
_fbp (Facebook) _fr (Facebook) |
Provided by Facebook, this pixel matches Facebook user profiles anonymously, enabling retargeting on the Facebook platform, as well as the creation of lookalike audiences. This pixel allows us to analyse marketing efforts, and serve the most relevant advertising to the correct audience. |
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity sets cookies on visitor browsers to collect non personally identifiable information such as session data. This is GDPR compliant. The data is used to analyse how visitors use and interact with our website through behavioural metrics, heatmaps, and session replay. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of pages/services and online activity.
The cookies set by Microsoft Clarity are:
Cookie name | Purpose |
_clck | Persists the Clarity User ID and preferences, unique to that site is attributed to the same user ID. |
_clsk | Connects multiple page views by a user into a single Clarity session recording. |
You can find out more about the specific cookies set and their purpose on the Microsoft Clarity website.
Third party cookies and pixel tags
Occasionally, third parties may set cookies on our website which we do not control. These are called “third party cookies”.
On some pages of our website we may include embedded content, for example from YouTube or Twitter. When you visit a page with embedded content, the service provider (for example, YouTube) may set its own cookies on your web browser to track the success of their application or to customise their application to you.
We do not control the use of these cookies and cannot access them, as cookies can only be accessed by the party who originally set them. You should check the third party websites for more information about these cookies.
Pixel tags
A pixel tag is an invisible tag placed on certain pages of a website, which enables cookies to be downloaded to your browser. Pixel tags register when a particular computer and/or mobile device visits a particular page, allowing a particular user to be identified across various sites, and for targeted adverts to be served to that user across the various websites you visit.
Controlling pixel tags
Pixel tags are not stored on your computer or mobile device. If you disable cookies, the pixel tag will only detect an anonymous website visit.
Chatbot
The only value that we store in cookies to operate the web chat pop-up is the user's current preferred language, which is defaulted to "English". Although not a cookie, we also store a unique user ID in the user's browser's local storage to establish whether the user is returning and display their conversation history. This is a third party service provided by Futr.ai.
How to control your cookies
Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit www.aboutcookies.org.uk or www.allaboutcookies.org