Cookie Policy

What are Cookies and how do they benefit you? 

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you browse websites. 

Cookies are not actual programs or software. When you visit a website it stores a snippet of text from your visit; the next time you visit, this text is retrieved by the website and they recognise you. This can be used differently depending on the actual website visited. Cookies allow websites to store such things as user preferences. You can think of cookies as providing a “memory” for the website, enabling it to recognise a user and respond appropriately. Cookies on our website do NOT store any personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, email addresses or phone numbers. 

Our cookies help us: 

• Make our website work as you’d expect
• Remember your settings during visits
• Allow you to share pages (names/blog articles)with social networks like Facebook or Twitter
• Continuously improve our website for you 

We do not use cookies to:

• Directly identify any individual who visits our website. Any personally identifiable information (IP addresses and location) is processed anonymously using Google Analytics
• Collect any sensitive information, without your express permission

What information is kept by the cookie? 

A cookie will typically hold:

• The name of the website that it has come from
• How long the cookie will stay on your computer or phone
• A value – usually a randomly generated unique number 

Granting Us Permission To Use Cookies 

If the settings on the software you are using to view this website(i.e. browser e.g. Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox etc) are set up to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you accept our use of cookies. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can disable cookies through ‘Internet Options’ on your browser menu at any time, however, please be aware that doing so will probably mean that our site may not work as well as you would expect. 

Our use of cookies falls into a few categories such as:

• Website function cookies
• Social media cookies
• Third party and advertising cookies
• Analytics cookies

More about Our Cookies 

Website Function Cookies such as session or preference cookies: 

Session cookies

• These only last until you close your browser.
• They are not stored on your hard drive.
• They are usually used to track the pages that you visit so that information can be customised for you for that visit.

Persistent cookies

• These are stored on your hard drive until you delete them or they reach their expiry date.
• These may, for example, be used to remember your preferences when you use the site.

 We use cookies to make our website function including:

• Holding information once you’ve logged in to save you having to re-login each time you visit a different page during your session
• Once you log off or close the browser the session cookie will be removed

Third-party functions 

Our site, like most websites, includes functionality provided by third parties. A common example is an embedded YouTube or Vimeo video. Disabling these cookies is likely to break the functions offered by these third parties

 Social Media Website Cookies

To facilitate easy sharing or liking of content on social network platforms such Facebook and Twitter, we have included sharing buttons on our site. The privacy implications on this will vary from social network to social network and will be dependent on the privacy settings you have chosen on these networks.

 Anonymous Visitor & Behaviour Statistics Cookies

Analytics programs use cookies to compile website statistics for us to use to improve our site. Unless you explicitly give us your information by filling in a form or calling us, all data that analytics programs collect is stored anonymously where we only see totals and not specific individual data. 

Examples include:

• How visitors reached our website (e.g. from a search engine, an advert, from social media site etc)
• The activity of users on the site such as the number of pages viewed, time spent on individual pages, the pages visitors exit from our site
• How often visitors return to our site
• Visitor technology used (e.g. browser, operating system, device etc)

These statistics help us make our site as user-friendly as possible, to ensure a good experience for all visitors.

We use:

• Google Analytics. A program that helps us measure site usage details including the examples above;
• Site Improvement Cookies. We regularly test new designs or site features on our site. We do this by showing slightly different versions of our website to different people and anonymously monitoring how visitors respond to these different versions. Ultimately this helps us to offer you a better website;
• Google Advertising. Some of our business partners or third parties use cookies or other tracking technologies on our site, including:
• Third-party vendors, including Google, show ads on sites on the internet;
• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to our website;
• We have no access to or control over these cookies. Users may opt-out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page;
• We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business;
• You may opt out of the DoubleClick cookie by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page or you may opt out of Google Analytics by visiting the Google Analytics opt-out page.

‍AdRoll Advertising 

As you browse our website, advertising Cookies will be placed on your computer or mobile device so that we can understand what you are interested in. Our display advertising partner, AdRoll, then enables us to present you with retargeting advertising on other sites based on your previous interaction with our website. The techniques our partners employ do not collect personal information such as your name, email address, postal address, or telephone number. You can visit this page to opt out of AdRoll’s and their partner’s targeted advertising. 

Turning Cookies Off 

You can switch cookies off by adjusting your internet browser settings to stop it accepting cookies. 

Please be aware though that turning off cookies will impair the performance of many websites and not just ours.