Cookies

We place small files (known as cookies) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the website.

Cookies are used to measure how you use our website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs.

Our cookies are not used to identify you personally.

You will normally see a message on our website before we store a cookie on your computer.

How we use cookies on our website

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use our website. We do this to help ensure our website is meeting the needs of users and to help us make improvements.

Google Analytics stores information about:

  1. the pages you visit on our website
  2. how long you spend on each of our pages
  3. how you arrived at our website
  4. which of our links you click on during your visit
  5. We do not collect nor store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify you
  6. We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data

Google Analytics sets the following cookies

Universal Analytics

Cookie Purpose Expiry
_ga This is a count of how many people visit our website by tracking whether you have visited before 2 years
_gat This is used to manage the rate of page view requests 10 minutes

Google Analytics

Cookie Purpose Expiry
_utma This lets us know if you have visited before so we can count how many of our visitors are new to our website or particular pages within it 2 years
_utmb This works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time you spend on our website 30 minutes
_utmc This works with _utmb to calculate when you close your browser when you close your browser
_utmz This tells us how you reached our website (e.g. direct entry, from another website or search engine) 6 months

You can install browser plug-ins to opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

Our introductory message

You may see a welcome message when you first visit our website. At this stage no cookies are stored. If you visit another page or click on a link, we will store the Google Analytics cookies and you will not see the message again. 

  1. By visiting other pages you are deemed to have accepted the cookies
  2. You may visit our Contact Us page without cookies being stored