COOKIE POLICY

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality.

For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

  • Forms related cookiesWhen you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

  • This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Blocking cookies

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies. For example:

  • In Internet Explorer 11 you can refuse all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, select the “Privacy”taband, locate “Advanced” under Settings and choose if you want to allow, block or be promoted for first and third-party cookies.
  • In Microsoft Edge click on the three dots icon in the top right-hand corner and select “Settings”. Locate “View advanced settings”. In the “Cookies” section you will find a drop-down menu where you can select “Block only third-party cookies” or “Block all cookies”. You will then have to re-start Microsoft Edge.
  • In Firefox you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Options”, and un-checking “Accept cookies from sites” in the “Privacy” box.
  • In Google Chrome you can adjust your cookie permissions by clicking on the three dots icon in the top right-hand corner of your browser screen, selecting “Settings” from near the bottom of the drop-down list, then clicking on “Advanced” near the bottom. This should open options. In the “Privacy” section, click “Content Settings” and disable cookies by selecting “Block site from setting any data”. Click “Done” to save your preferences.
  • On Safari on Apple OS Xclick on the Safarimenu, then “Preferences” then “Privacy”. Under “Accept Cookies” unselect the “Always allow” option.
  • For Opera choose “Settings”, “Quick Preferences” and uncheck “Enable Cookies”.

Blocking all cookies will, however, have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you may not be able to use certain features on our website (log on, access content, use search functions).

Deleting cookies

You can also delete cookies already stored on your computer:

  • In Internet Explorer 11 click on “Tools”, point to “Safety” and then select the “Delete browsing history”. Click on the “Cookies and website data” checkbox and then choose “Delete”.
  • In Microsoft Edge click on the three dots icon in the top right-hand corner and select “Settings”. Under “Clear browsing data” select “Choose what to clear” and select the checkbox next to “Cookies and saved website data” then click on “Clear”. If you wish you can turn the“Always clear this when I close the browser” setting to “On”.
  • To delete cookies from a particular website in Firefox, click on the three lines icon and choose “Options”. In the “Privacy & Security” panel go to the “History” section and in the drop menu next to “Firefox will” choose “Use custom settings for history”. A cookies window will appear when you click “Show Cookies”. In the Search field type the name of the site whose cookies you want to remove. Select the cookies you wish to remove and click “Remove Selected”. Click “Close” to close the Cookies window and the “about:preferences” page. oTo delete all cookies, open the cookies window as above and click “Remove All Cookies”.
  • In Google Chrome click on the three dots icon in the top right-hand corner, select “Settings” and find “Advanced” near the bottom. Under “Privacy and security” click on “Content settings”. Click on “Cookies” and Under “All cookies and site data” select “Remove All”. Confirm by clicking on “Clear all”.
  • On Safari on Apple OS Xclick on the Safari menu, then select “Preferences” from the drop-down. Go to the “Privacy” tab. Click the “Remove All Website Data” button to remove all stored website data and click “Remove Now” to confirm. To remove stored data by individual site, click on the “Details” button and select the sites with the stored data you wish to remove. Click “Remove” and then “Done”.
  • For Opera selecting “Settings”, “Preferences”, “Advanced” and then “Cookies” and checking the “Delete new cookies when exiting Opera” and closing Opera when you have finished browsing will ensure the cookie information is kept in the browser.

Cookies description

Cookie Name: PHPSESSID
Purpose: To store a simple message when a form is submitted that can be displayed on a different page. For example, if an enquiry form is completed incorrectly, a message will be stored and presented to the user to indicate the errors in the submission. When an enquiry form is submitted successfully, a message is stored and presented to the user thanking them for their enquiry. No personal information is stored in this cookie.
Expiry: _ga 2 years, _gid 24 hours

Cookie: Google Analytics
Cookie Names: _ga, _gid
Purpose: This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports.
Expiry: _ga 2 years, _gid 24 hours
More information: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage

Cookie: Google Analytics
Cookie Name: _gat
Purpose: Used to throttle request rate. This cookie does not store any user information; it’s just used to limit the number of requests that have to be made to doubleclick.net
Expiry: 1 minute
More information: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage

Cookie: Facebook
Cookie Name: _FBP
Purpose: Used by Facebook to deliver a series of advertisement products such as real time bidding from third party advertisers.
Expiry: 3 months

Cookie: Facebook
Cookie Name: c_user
Purpose: This cookie contains the user ID of the currently logged in user.

Cookie: Facebook
Cookie Names: DATR, SB
Purpose: Used by Facebook and allows you to control the “Follow us on Facebook” and “Like” buttons. It records information about your browser, activity and Facebook identity.
Expiry: 2 years

Cookie: Facebook
Cookie Names: XS
Purpose: Used by Facebook and allows you to control the “Follow us on Facebook” and “Like” buttons. It records information about your browser, activity and Facebook identity.
Expiry: 3 months

Cookie: Facebook
Cookie Name: FR
Purpose: This cookie will help deliver our advertising to people who have already visited our website when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook Advertising.
Function: Targeting/ Re-marketing cookies.
Expiry: 3 months
More information: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy

Cookie: Youtube
Cookie Name: GPS
Purpose: Registers a unique ID on mobile devices to enable tracking based on geographical GPS location.
Expiry: 1 day

Cookie: Youtube
Cookie Name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Purpose: Tries to estimate the users’ bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos.
Expiry: 179 days

Cookie: Youtube
Cookie Name: YSC
Purpose: Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen.
Expiry: Session

Cookie: Youtube
Cookie Name: PREF
Purpose: Registers a unique ID that is used by Google to keep statistics of how the visitor uses YouTube videos across different websites.
Expiry: 8 months

More Information

Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site. This Cookies Policy was created with the help of the Cookies Policy Template Generator and the Terms and Conditions Template.

However if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us through one of our preferred contact methods: