What are ‘cookies’?

In simple terms a cookie is a small piece of information sent from our website to your computer to help us recognise it quickly. We use cookies to help improve the offering and deliver a better service to each visitor. Any information gathered through the use of cookies is compiled on an aggregate, anonymous basis.

Cookie Categories

We use the following types of cookies:

1. Strictly necessary. Required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.
2. Analytical/performance. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
3. Functionality. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
4. Targeting. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google Analytics creates the following cookies on our site:

• _ga – Distinguishes between unique users.
• _gid – Stores a unique value for each page visited.
• _dc_gtm_UA-XXX – _gat cookies are used to Limit the amount of data recorded by Google on high traffic volume website.

All of these cookies are within the Performance / Analytical category.

HotJar

This website uses HotJar which is a behaviour analytics and user feedback service that helps us to understand the behaviour of you, our website users, and get feedback through tools such as heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys.

Hotjar cookies are categorised as Analytical / Performance, a large majority of these can be identified easily as they are prefixed with the letters hj or _hj.

You can find a full list of Hotjar cookies here if you wish to investigate further and block.

Do I have to agree to cookies?

If you prefer not to accept a cookie, you can navigate the website like a normal user. You can switch off cookies in your web browser if they do not want to be tracked.

Please see the links below for instructions on limiting cookies for your browser:

• Safari
• Opera
• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Internet Explorer

Where can I get more information?

Further information about cookies can be found at on the ICO website www.ico.org.uk