All About Cookies

What are cookies?

When you visit a site that uses cookies for the first time, a cookie (a small digital file) is downloaded onto your computer, laptop, tablet or mobile. The files are designed to hold a small amount of data for a specific customer and website. So the next time that you visit that same site your device will check to see if there is a cookie for that site. The site then knows you’ve visited before and can track what you’ve clicked on, what you are and aren’t interested in and will remember your preferences to allow the site to provide a page that is tailored to you personally.

Why do we use cookies?

The reason we use cookies is to continue improving the site, to allow us to give you a more personal service and to make it easier to help you find what you’re looking for.

We use cookies to…

  • Help us improve the website by measuring any errors that occur
  • Provide statistics on how our website is used
  • Test different designs of our website
  • See how effective our adverts are
  • Gather information that could be used to advertise our products or services to you on other websites

Why should you allow cookies?

Cookies are not a new thing and they have always been on websites, but a change in the law has meant that we need to check that using them is OK with you. If you prevent cookies we cannot guarantee how our site will perform for you. It will also not mean that you cannot comment on posts, share on social networks and we will be unable to continue improving the website to benefit you.

Your cookie settings

We are in the process of changing our site to make it simpler for you to manage the cookies we use. The cookie settings on this website are set to ‘allow all cookies’ to give you the best user experience, so using our site it indicates that you accept the use of cookies. However, if you would like to change your preferences and opt out of using cookies, then please click on the decline button at the bottom of the screen. Although we will honour the preference that you choose, please be aware that a small amount of cookies cannot be controlled properly until we have completed all the changes we are currently making to the site in relation to cookies.

Further reading

If you want to read more about cookies, then please take a look at the following links:
http://www.allaboutcookies.org

http://www.youronlinechoices.eu

The ICC UK cookie guide can be found here:
https://www.cookielaw.org/media/1096/icc_uk_cookiesguide_revnov.pdf